



6 


Q><u^ 





A WOMAN OF THIRTY 
A START IN LIFE 














PREFACE. 


“La Femme de Trente Ans,” which opens the volume, 
is tainted with a kind of sentimentalism which, in Balzac’s 
hands and to English taste, very rarely escapes a smatch of 
the rancid. As M. de Lovenjoul’s patient investigations have 
shown, and as the curiously wide date 1828-1844 would itself 
indicate to any one who has carefully studied Balzac’s ways of 
proceeding, it is not really a single story at all, but consists 
of half a dozen chapters or episodes originally published at 
different times and in different places, and stuck together with 
so much less than even the author’s usual attention to strict 
construction, that the general title is totally inapplicable to 
the greater part of the book, and that the chronology of that 
part to which it does apply fits in very badly with the rest. 
This, however, is the least of the faults of the piece. It is 
more — though still not most — serious that Balzac never seems 
to have made up anything like a clear or consistent idea of 
Julie d’Aiglemont in his mind. First she is a selfish and 
thoughtless child ; then an angelic and persecuted but faithful 
wife ; then a somewhat facile victim to a very commonplace 
seducer, after resisting an exceptional one. So, again, she is 
first a devoted mother, then an almost unnatural parent, and 
then again devoted, being punished par ou elle a piche [how- 
ever she may sin] once more. Even this, however, might 
have been atoned for by truth, or grace, or power of handling. 
I cannot find much of any of these things here. Not to men- 
tion the unsavoriness of part of Julie’s trials, they are not 
such as, in me at least, excite any sympathy ; and Balzac has 
drenched her with the sickly sentiment above noticed to an 
almost nauseous extent. Although he would have us take the 
Marquis as a brutal husband, he does not in effect represent 

(ix) 


X 


PREFACE. 


him as such, but merely as a not very refined and rather clumsy 
“ good fellow,” who for his sins is cursed with a viijauree 
[affected] of a wife. The Julie-Arthur love-passages are in the 
very worst style of “sensibility;” and though I fully ac- 
knowledge the heroism of my countryman Lord Arthur in 
allowing his fingers to be crushed and making no sign — al- 
though I question very much whether I could have done the 
same — I fear this romantic act does not suffice to give verisi- 
militude to a figure which is for the most part mere pasteboard, 
with sawdust inside and tinsel out. Many of the incidents, 
such as the pushing of the child into the water, and, still more, 
the scene on shipboard where the princely Corsair takes mil- 
lions out of a piano and gives them away, have the crude and 
childish absurdity of the “ CEuvres de Jeunesse,” which they 
very much resemble, and with which, from the earliest date 
given, they may very probably have been contemporary. 
Those who are fortunate enough to find Julie, in her early 
afternoon of fei?ime incomprise [non-compromised woman], 
attractive, may put up with these defects. I own that I am 
not quite able to find the compensation sufficient. The worse 
side of the French “sensibility” school from Rousseau to 
Madame de Stael appears here ; and Balzac, genius as he was, 
had quite weak points enough of his own without borrowing 
other men’s and women’s. 

It takes M. de Lovenjoul nearly three of his large pages of 
small type to give an exact bibliography of the extraordinary 
mosaic which bears the title of “ La Femme de Trente Ans.” 
It must be sufficient here to say that most of its parts appeared 
separately in different periodicals (notably the “ Revue de 
Paris”) during the very early thirties; that when in 1832 most 
of them appeared together in the “ Scenes de la Vie Privee ” 
they were independent stories ; and that when the author did 
put them together, he at first adopted the title “ M£me His- 
toire.” 

The second story in the volume, a very slight touch of un- 


PREFACE. 


xi 


necessary cruelty excepted, is one of the truest and most amus- 
ing of all Balzac’s repertoire ; and it is conducted according 
to the orthodox methods of poetical justice. It is impossible 
not to recognize the justice of the portraiture of the luckless 
Oscar Husson, and the exact verisimilitude of the way in which 
he succumbs to the temptations and practical jokes (the first 
title of the story was “ Le Danger des Mystifications”) of his 
companions. I am not a good authority on matters dramatic ; 
but it seems to me that the story would lend itself to the stage 
in the right hands better than almost anything that Balzac 
has done. Half an enfant terrible and half a Sir Martin Mar- 
all, the luckless Oscar “ puts his foot into it,” and emerges in 
deplorable condition, with a sustained success which would do 
credit to all but the very best writers of farcical comedy, and 
would not disgrace the very best. 

In such pieces the characters other than the hero have but 
to play contributory parts, and here they do not fail to do 
so. M. de Serizy, whom it pleased Balzac to keep in a dozen 
books as his stock example of the unfortunate husband, plays 
his part with at least as much dignity as is easily possible 
to such a personage. Madame Clapart is not too absurd as 
the fond mother of the cub; and Moreau, her ancient lover, 
is equally commendable in the not very easy part of a “ pro- 
tector.” The easy-going ladies who figure in Oscar’s second 
collapse display well enough that rather facile generosity and 
jood-nature which Balzac is fond of attributing to them. 
Vs for the “ Mystificators,” Balzac, as usual, is decidedly 
nore lenient to the artist folk than he is elsewhere to men 
3f letters. Mistigris, or Leon de Lora, is always a pleasant 
person, and Joseph Bridau always a respectable one. Georges 
Marest is no doubt a bad fellow, but he gets punished. 

Nor ought we to omit notice of the careful study of the 
apprenticeship of a lawyer’s clerk, wherein, as elsewhere no 
doubt, Balzac profited by his own novitiate. Altogether the 
story is a pleasant one, and we acquiesce in the tempering 


xii 


PREFACE. 

of the wind to Oscar when that ordinary person is consoled 
for his sufferings with the paradise of the French bourgeois 
— a respectable place, a wife with no dangerous brilliancy, 
and a good dot. 

G. S. 



A WOMAN OF THIRTY, 

To Louis Boulanger , Painter . 

I. 



EARLY MISTAKES. 

It was a Sunday morning in the beginning of April, 1813, a 
morning which gave promise of one of those bright days when 
Parisians, for the first time in the year, behold dry pavements 
underfoot and a cloudless sky overhead. It was not yet noon 
when a luxurious cabriolet, drawn by two spirited horses, 
turned out of the Rue de Castiglione into the Rue de Rivoli, 
and drew up behind a row of carriages standing before the 
newly opened barrier half-way down the Feuillant Terrace. 
The owner of the carriage looked anxious and out of health ; 
the thin hair on his sallow temples, turning gray already, gave 
a look of premature age to his face. He flung the reins to a 
servant who followed on horseback, and alighted to take in 
his arms a young girl whose dainty beauty had already at- 
tracted the eyes of loungers on the terrace. The little lady, 
standing upon the carriage step, graciously submitted to be 
taken by the waist, putting an arm around the neck of her 
guide, who set her down upon the pavement without so much 
as ruffling the trimming of her green rep dress. No lover 
would have been more careful. The stranger could only be 
the father of the young girl, who took his arm familiarly, . 
without a word of thanks, and hurried him into the garden of 
the Tuileries. 

The old father noted the wondering stare which some of 
the young men gave the couple, and the sad expression left his 
face for a moment. Although he had long since reached the 

( 1 ) 


2 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


time of life when a man is fain to be content with such illu- 
sory delights as vanity bestows, he began to smile. 

“ They think you are my wife,” he said in the young lady’s 
ear, and he held himself erect and walked with slow steps, 
which filled his daughter with despair. 

He seemed to take up the coquette’s part for her ; perhaps 
of the two, he was the more gratified by the curious glances 
directed at those little feet, shod with plum-colored prunella ; 
at the dainty figure outlined by a low-cut bodice, filled in 
with an embroidered chemisette, which only partially con- 
cealed the girlish throat. Her dress was lifted by her move- 
ments as she walked, giving glimpses higher than the shoes of 
delicately moulded outlines beneath open-work silk stockings. 
More than one of the idlers turned and passed the pair again, 
to admire or to catch a second glimpse of the young face, 
about which the brown tresses played ; there w r as a glow in its 
white and red, partly reflected from the rose-colored satin 
lining of her fashionable bonnet, partly due to the eagerness 
and impatience which sparkled in every feature. A mischiev- 
ous sweetness lighted up the beautiful, almond shaped dark 
eyes, bathed in liquid brightness, shaded by the long lashes 
and curving arch of eyebrow. Life and youth displayed their 
treasures in the petulant face and in the gracious outlines of 
the bust, unspoiled even by the fashion of the day, which 
brought the girdle under the breast. 

The young lady herself appeared to be insensible to admi- 
ration. Her eyes were fixed in a sort of anxiety on the palace 
of the Tuileries, the goal, doubtless, of her petulant prome- 
nade. It wanted but fifteen minutes of noon, yet even at that 
early hour several women in gala dress were coming away 
from the Tuileries, not without backward glances at the gates 
and pouting looks of discontent, as if they regretted the late- 
ness of the arrival which had cheated them of a longed-for 
spectacle. Chance carried a few words let fall by one of these 
disappointed fair ones to the ears of the charming stranger, 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


and put her in a more than common uneasiness. The elderly 
man watched the signs of impatience and apprehension which 
flitted across his companion’s pretty face with interest, rather 
than amusement, in his eyes, observing her with a close and 
careful attention, which perhaps could only be prompted by 
some after-thought in the depths of a father’s mind. 

It was the thirteenth Sunday of the year 1813. In two 
days’ time Napoleon was to set out upon the disastrous cam- 
paign in which he was to lose first Bessiferes, and then Duroc ; 
he was to win the memorable battles of Lutzen and Bautzen, 
to see himself treacherously deserted by Austria, Saxony, 
Bavaria, and Bernadotte, and to dispute the dreadful field of 
Leipsic.* The magnificent review commanded for that day by 
the Emperor was to be the last of so many which had long 
drawn forth the admiration of Paris and of foreign visitors. 
For the last time the Old Guard would execute their scientific 
military manoeuvres with the pomp and precision which some- 
times amazed the Giant himself. Napoleon was nearly ready 
for his duel with Europe. It was a sad sentiment which 
brought a brilliant and curious throng to the Tuileries. 
Each mind seemed to foresee the future ; perhaps, too, in every 
mind another thought was dimly present, how that in that 
future, when the heroic age of France should have taken the 
half-fabulous color with which it is tinged for us to-day, men’s 
imaginations would more than once seek to retrace the picture 
of the pageant which they were assembled to behold. 

“ Do let us go more quickly, father ; I can hear the drums,” 
the young girl said, and ih a half-teasing, half-coaxing manner 
she urged her companion forward. 

“The troops are marching into the Tuileries,” said he. 

“ Or marching out of it — everybody is coming away,” she 
answered in childish vexation, which drew a smile from her 
father. 

* V6lkerschlacht : Napoleon’s first defeat. 


4 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


“The review only begins at half-past twelve,” he said ; he 
had fallen half behind his impetuous daughter. 

It might have been supposed that she meant to hasten their 
progress by the movement of her right arm, for it swung like 
an oar-blade through the water. In her impatience she had 
crushed her handkerchief into a ball in her tiny, well-gloved 
fingers. Now and then the old man smiled, but the smiles 
were succeeded by an anxious look which crossed his withered 
face and saddened it. In his love for the fair young girl by 
his side, he was as fain to exalt the present moment as to 
dread the future. “She is happy to-day; will her happiness 
last?” he seemed to ask himself, for the old are somewhat 
prone to foresee their own sorrows in the future of the young. 

Father and daughter reached the peristyle under the tower 
where the tricolor flag was still waving ; but, as they passed 
under the arch by which people came and went between the 
gardens of the Tuileries and the Place du Carrousel, the 
sentries on guard called out sternly — 

“ No admittance this way ! ” 

By standing on tiptoe the young girl contrived to catch a 
glimpse of a crowd of well-dressed women, thronging either 
side of the old marble arcade along which the Emperor was 
to pass. 

“ We were too late in starting, father; you can see that 
quite well.” A little piteous pout revealed the immense 
importance which she attached to the sight of this particular 
review. 

“ Very well, Julie — let us go away. You dislike a crush.” 

“ Do let us stay, father. Even here I may catch a glimpse 
of the Emperor ; he might die during this campaign, and then 
I should never have seen him.” 

Her father shuddered at the selfish speech. There were 
tears in the girl’s voice ; he looked at her, <and thought that 
he saw tears beneath her lowered eyelids ; tears caused not so 
much by the disappointment as by one of the troubles of early 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


5 


youth, a secret easily guessed by an old father. Suddenly 
Julie’s face flushed, and she uttered an exclamation. Neither 
her father nor the sentinels understood the meaning of the 
cry; but an officer within the barrier, who sprang across the 
court toward the staircase, heard it, and turned abruptly at 
the sound. He went to the arcade by the gardens of the 
Tuileries, and recognized the young lady who had been hidden 
for a moment by the tall bearskin caps of the grenadiers. He 
set aside in favor of the pair the order which he himself had 
given. Then, taking no heed of the murmurings of the 
fashionable crowd seated under the arcade, he gently drew 
the enraptured child toward him. 

“ I am no longer surprised at her vexation and enthusiasm, 
i {you are in waiting,” the old man said with a half-mocking, 
half-serious glance at the officer. 

“ If you want a good position, Monsieur le Due,” the young 
man answered, “ we must not spend any time in talking. The 
Emperor does not like to be kept waiting, and the grand 
marshal has sent me to announce our readiness.” 

As he spoke, he had taken Julie’s arm with a certain air of 
old acquaintance, and drew her rapidly in the direction of the 
Place du Carrousel. Julie was astonished at the sight. An 
immense crowd was penned up in a narrow space, shut in 
between the gray walls of the palace and the limits marked 
out by chains round the great sanded squares in the midst of 
the courtyard of the Tuileries. The cordon of sentries posted 
to keep a clear passage for the Emperor and his staff had great 
difficulty in keeping back the eager humming swarm of human 
beings. 

“Is it going to be a very fine sight?” Julie asked (she was 
radiant now). 

“ Pray take care ! ” cried her guide, and, seizing Julie by 
the waist, he lifted her up with as much vigor as rapidity and 
set her down beside a pillar. 

But for his prompt action, his gazing kinswoman would 


6 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


have come into collision with the hindquarters of a white 
horse which Napoleon’s Mameluke held by the bridle ; the 
animal in its trappings of green velvet and gold stood almost 
under the arcade, some ten paces behind the rest of the 
horses in readiness for the Emperor’s staff. 

The young officer placed the father and daughter in front 
of the crowd in the first space to the right, and recommended 
them by a sign to the two veteran grenadiers on either side. 
Then he went on his way into the palace ; a look of great joy 
and happiness had succeeded to his horror-stricken expression 
when the horse backed. Julie had given his hand a mysterious 
pressure; had she meant to thank him for the little service he 
had done her, or did she tell him : “ After all, I shall really 
see you? ” She bent her head quite graciously in response to 
the respectful bow by which the officer took leave of them 
before he vanished. 

The old man stood a little behind his daughter. He looked 
grave. He seemed to have left the two young people together 
for some purpose of his own, and now he furtively watched 
the girl, trying to lull her into false security by appearing to 
give his whole attention to the magnificent sight in the Place 
du Carrousel. When Julie’s eyes turned to her father with 
the expression of a schoolboy before his master, he answered 
her glance by a gay, kindly smile, but his own keen eyes had 
followed the officer under the arcade, and nothing of all that 
passed was lost upon him. 

“What a grand sight ! ” said Julie in a low voice, as she 
pressed her father’s hand ; and, indeed, the pomp and pic- 
turesqueness of the spectacle in the Place du Carrousel drew 
the same exclamation from thousands upon thousands of spec- 
tators, all agape with wonder. Another array of sightseers, 
as tightly packed as the ranks behind the old noble and his 
daughter, filled the narrow strip of pavement by the railings 
which crossed the Place du Carrousel from side to side in a 
line parallel with the Tuileries. The dense living mass, varie- 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


7 


gated by the colors of the women’s dresses, traced out a bold 
line across the centre of the Place du Carrousel, filling in 
the fourth side of a vast parallelogram, surrounded on three 
sides by the Tuileries itself. Within the precincts thus railed 
off stood the regiments of the Old Guard about to be passed 
in review, drawn up opposite the palace in imposing blue 
columns, ten ranks in depth. Without and beyond in the 
Piace du Carrousel stood several regiments likewise drawn up 
in parallel lines, ready to march in through the arch in the 
centre ; the Triumphal Arch, where the bronze horses of St. 
Mark from Venice used to stand in those days. At either 
end, by the Louvre Galleries, the regimental bands were 
stationed, masked by the. Polish Lancers then on duty. 

The greater part of the vast graveled space was empty as an 
arena, ready for the evolutions of those silent masses disposed 
with the symmetry of military art. The sunlight blazed back 
from ten thousand bayonets in thin points of flame ; the 
breeze ruffled the men’s helmet plumes till they swayed like 
the crests of forest trees before a gale. The mute, glittering 
ranks of veterans were full of bright contrasting colors, thanks 
to their different uniforms, weapons, accoutrements, and 
aiguillettes; and the whole great picture, that miniature battle- 
field before the combat, was framed by the majestic towering 
walls of the Tuileries, which officers and men seemed to rival 
in their immobility. Involuntarily the spectator made the 
comparison between the walls of men and the walls of stone. 
The spring sunlight, flooding white masonry reared but yes- 
terday and buildings centuries old, shone full likewise upon 
thousands of bronzed faces, each one with its own tale of 
perils passed, each one gravely expectant of perils to come. 

The colonels of the regiments came and went alone before 
the ranks of heroes; and behind the masses of troops, checkered 
with blue and silver and gold and purple, the curious could 
discern the tricolor pennons on the lances of some half-a- 
dozen indefatigable Polish cavalry, rushing about like shep- 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


8 

herds’ dogs in charge of a flock, caracoling up and down be- 
tween the troops and the crowd, to keep the gazers within their 
proper bounds. But for this slight flutter of movement, the 
whole scene might have been taking place in the courtyard of 
the palace of the Sleeping Beauty. The very spring breeze, ruf- 
fling up the long fur on the grenadiers’ bearskins, bore witness 
to the men’s immobility, as the smothered murmur of the 
crowd emphasized their silence. Now and again the jingling 
of Chinese bells, or a chance blow to a big drum, woke the 
reverberating echoes of the Imperial Palace with a sound like 
the far-off rumblings of thunder. 

An indescribable, unmistakable enthusiasm was manifest in 
the expectancy of the multitude. France was about to take 
farewell of Napoleon on the eve of a campaign of which the 
meanest citizen foresaw the perils. The existence of the 
French Empire was at stake — to be, or not to be. The whole 
citizen population seemed to be as much inspired with this 
thought as that other armed population standing in serried 
and silent ranks in the inclosed space, with the Eagles and 
the genius of Napoleon hovering above them. 

Those very soldiers were the hope of France, her last drop 
of blood ; and this accounted for not a little of the anxious 
interest of the scene. Most of the gazers in the crowd had 
bidden farewell — perhaps farewell for ever — to the men who 
made up the rank and file of the battalions ; and even those 
most hostile to the Emperor, in their hearts, put up fervent 
prayers to heaven for the glory of France; and those most 
weary of the struggle with the rest of Europe had left their 
hatreds behind as they passed in under the Triumphal Arch. 
They, too, felt that in the hour of danger Napoleon meant 
France herself. 

The clock of the Tuileries struck the half-hour. In a 
moment the hum of the crowd ceased. The silence was so 
deep that you mighi have heard a child speak. The old 
noble and his daughter, wholly intent, seeming to live only 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


9 


by their eyes, caught a distinct sound of spurs and clank of 
swords echoing up under the sonorous peristyle. 

And suddenly there appeared a short, somewhat stout figure 
in a green uniform, white trousers, and riding boots; a man 
wearing on his head a cocked hat well-nigh as magically 
potent as its wearer ; the broad red ribbon of the Legion of 
Honor rose and fell on his breast, and a short sword hung at 
his side. At one and the same moment the man was seen by 
all eyes in all parts of the square. 

Immediately the drums beat a salute, both bands struck up 
a martial refrain, caught and repeated like a fugue by every 
instrument from the thinnest flutes to the largest drum. The 
clangor of that call to arms thrilled through every soul. The 
colors dropped and the men presented arms, one unanimous 
rhythmical movement shaking every bayonet from the fore- 
most front near the palace to the last rank in the Place du 
Carrousel. The words of command sped from line to line 
like echoes. The whole enthusiastic multitude sent up a 
shout of “ Long live the Emperor ! ” 

Everything shook, quivered, and thrilled at last. Napoleon 
had mounted his horse. It was his movement that had put 
life into those silent masses of men ; the dumb instruments 
had found a voice at his coming, the Eagles and the colors 
had obeyed the same impulse which had brought emotion into 
all faces. 

The very walls of the high galleries of the old palace seemed 
to cry aloud, “ Long live the Emperor! ” 

There was something preternatural about it — it was magic 
at work, a counterfeit presentment of the power of God ; or 
rather it was a fugitive image of a reign itself so fugitive 
though brilliant. 

And He the centre of such love, such enthusiasm and devo- 
tion, and so many prayers, he for whom the sun had driven 
the clouds from the sky, was sitting ther^. on his horse, three 
paces in front of his Golden Squadron, with the grand marshal 


10 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


on his left, and the marshal-in-waiting on his right. Amid all 
the outburst of enthusiasm at his presence not a feature of his 
face appeared to alter. 

“ Oh ! yes. At Wagram, in the thick of the firing, on the 
field of Borodino, among the dead, always as cool as a cucum- 
ber He is!” said the grenadier, in answer to the questions 
with which the young girl plied him. -For a moment Julie was 
absorbed in the contemplation of that face, so quiet in the 
security of conscious power. The Emperor noticed Mile, de 
Chatillonest, and leaned to make some brief remark to Duroc, 
which drew a smile from the grand marshal. Then the review 
began. 

If hitherto the young lady’s attention had been divided 
between Napoleon’s impassive face and the blue, red, and 
green ranks of troops, from this time forth she was w'holly 
intent upon a young officer moving among the lines as they 
performed their swift symmetrical evolutions. She watched 
him gallop with tireless activity to and from the group where 
the plainly dressed Napoleon shone conspicuous. The officer 
rode a splendid black horse. His handsome sky-blue uniform 
marked him out amid the variegated multitude as one of the 
Emperor’s orderly staff-officers. His gold lace glittered in 
the sunshine which lighted up the aigrette on his tall, narrow 
shako, so that the gazer might have compared him to a will- 
o’-the wisp, or to a visible spirit emanating from the Emperor 
to infuse movement into those battalions whose swaying bayo- 
nets flashed into flames ; for, at a mere glance from his eyes, 
they broke and gathered again, surging to and fro like the 
waves in a bay, or again swept before him like the long ridges 
of high-crested waves which the vexed ocean directs against 
the shore. 

When the manoeuvres were over the officer galloped back at 
full speed, pulled up his horse, and awaited orders. He was 
not ten paces from Julie as he stood before the Emperor, 
much as General Rapp stands in Gerard’s Battle of Austerlitz. 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


11 


The young girl could behold her lover in all his soldierly 
splendor. 

Colonel Victor d’Aiglemont, barely thirty years of age, was 
tall, slender, and well made. His well-proportioned figure 
never showed to better advantage than now as he exerted his 
strength to hold in the restive animal, whose back seemed to 
curve gracefully to the rider’s weight. His brown masculine 
face possessed the indefinable charm of perfectly regular feat- 
ures combined with youth. The fiery eyes under the broad 
forehead, shaded by thick eyebrow's and long lashes, looked 
like white ovals bordered by an outline of black. His nose 
had the delicate curve of an eagle’s beak ; the sinuous lines 
of the inevitable black mustache enhanced the crimson of the 
lips. The brown and tawny shades which overspread the 
wide high-colored cheeks told a tale of unusual vigor, and his 
whole face bore the impress of dashing courage. He was the 
very model which French artists seek to-day for the typical 
hero of Imperial France. The horse which he rode w r as 
covered with sweat ; the animal’s quivering head denoted the 
last degree of restiveness ; his hind hoofs were set down wide 
apart and exactly in a line ; he shook his long thick tail to the 
wind ; in his fidelity to his master he seemed to be a visible 
presentment of that master’s devotion to the Emperor. 

Julie saw her lover watching intently for the Emperor’s 
glances, and felt a momentary pang of jealousy, for as yet 
he had not given her a look. Suddenly at a word from his 
sovereign Victor gripped his horse’s flanks and set out at a 
gallop, but the animal took fright at a shadow cast by a post, 
shied, backed, and reared up so suddenly that his rider was 
all but thrown off. Julie cried out, her face grew white, 
people looked at her curiously, but she saw no one, her eyes 
were fixed upon the too mettlesome beast. The officer gave 
the horse a sharp admonitory cut with the whip, and galloped 
off with Napoleon’s order. 

Julie was so absorbed, so dizzy with sights and sounds, that 


12 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


unconsciously she clung to her father’s arm so tightly that he 
could read her thoughts by the varying pressure of her fingers. 
When Victor was all but flung out of the saddle, she clutched 
her father with a convulsive grip as if she herself were in dan- 
ger of falling, and the old man looked at his daughter’s tell- 
tale face with dark and painful anxiety. Pity, jealousy, 
something even of regret stole across every drawn and 
wrinkled line of mouth and brow. When he saw the un- 
wonted light in Julie’s eyes, when that cry broke from her, 
when the convulsive grasp of her fingers drew away the veil 
and put him in possession of her secret, then with that reve- 
lation of her love there came surely some swift revelation of 
the future. Mournful forebodings could be read in his own 
face. 

Julie’s soul seemed at that moment to have passed into the 
officer’s being. A torturing thought more cruel than any 
previous dread contracted the old man’s pain-worn features, as 
he saw the glance of understanding that passed between the 
soldier and Julie. The girl’s eyes were wet, her cheeks 
glowed with unwonted color. Her father turned abruptly and 
led her away into the garden of the Tuileries. 

“ Why, father,” she cried, “ there are still the regiments in 
the Place du Carrousel to be passed in review.” 

“No, child, all the troops are marching out.” 

“I think you are mistaken, father; Monsieur d’Aiglemont 
surely told them to advance ” 

“But I feel ill, my child, and I do not care to stay.” 

Julie could readily believe the words when she glanced at 
his face ; he looked quite worn out by his fatherly anxieties 
and cares. 

“Are you feeling very ill?” she asked indifferently, her 
mind was so full of other thoughts. 

“Every day is a reprieve for me, is it not?” returned her 
father. 

“ Now do you mean to make me miserable again by talking 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


13 


about your death ? I was in such spirits ! Do pray get rid of 
those horrid, gloomy ideas of yours.” 

The father heaved a sigh. “ Ah ! spoiled child,” he cried, 
“ the best hearts are sometimes very cruel. We devote our 
whole lives to you, you are our one thought, we plan for your 
welfare, sacrifice our tastes to your whims, idolize you, give 
the very blood in our veins for you, and all this is nothing, 
is it ? Alas ! yes, you take it all as a matter of course. If we 
would always have your smiles and your disdainful love, we 
should need the power of God in heaven. Then comes an- 
other, a lover, a husband, and steals away your heart.” 

Julie looked in amazement at her father; he walked slowly 
along, and there was no light in the eyes which he turned 
upon her. 

“You hide yourself even from us,” he continued, “but, 
perhaps, also you hide yourself from yourself — — ” 

“What do you mean by that, father?” 

“ I think that you have secrets from me, Julie. You love,” 
he went on quickly, as he saw the color rise to her face. 
“ Oh ! I hoped that you would stay with your old father until 
he died. I hoped to keep you with me, still radiant and 
happy, to admire you as you were but so lately. So long as I 
knew nothing of your future I could believe in a happy lot for 
you ; but now I cannot possibly take away with me a hope of 
happiness for your life, for you love the colonel even more 
than the cousin. I can no longer doubt it.” 

“And why should I be forbidden to love him?” asked 
Julie, with lively curiosity in her face. 

“Ah, my Julie, you would not understand me,” sighed the 
father. 

“Tell me, all the same,” said Julie, with an involuntary 
petulant gesture. 

“Very well, child, listen to me. Girls are apt to imagine 
noble and enchanting and totally imaginary figures in their 
own minds; they have -fanciful extravagant ideas about men, 


14 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


and sentiment, and life ; and then they innocently endow 
somebody or other with all the perfections of their day- 
dreams, and put their trust in him. They fall in love with 
this imaginary creature in the man of their choice; and then, 
when it is too late to escape from their fate, behold their first 
idol, the illusion made fair with their fancies, turns to an 
odious skeleton. Julie, I would rather have you fall in love 
with an old man than with the colonel. Ah ! if you could 
but see things from the standpoint of ten years hence, you 
would admit that my old experience was right. I know what 
Victor is, that gayety of his is simply animal spirits — the 
gayety of the barracks. He has no ability, and he is a spend- 
thrift. He is one of those men whom heaven created to eat 
and digest four meals a day, to sleep, to fall in love with the 
first woman that comes to hand, and to fight. He does not 
understand life. His kind heart, for he has a kind heart, will 
perhaps lead him to give his purse to a sufferer or to a com- 
rade ; but he is careless, he has not the delicacy of heart which 
makes us slaves to a woman’s happiness, he is ignorant, he is 

selfish. There are plenty of buts ” 

“ But, father, he must surely be clever, he must have ability, 

or he would not be a colonel ” 

“ My dear, Victor will be a colonel all his life. I have 
seen no one who appears to me to be worthy of you,” the old 
father added, with a kind of enthusiasm. 

He paused an instant, looked at his daughter, and added, 
“ Why, my poor Julie, you are still too young, too fragile, too 
delicate for the cares and rubs of married life. D’Aiglemont’s 
relations have spoiled him, just as your mother and I have 
spoiled you. What hope is there that you two could agree, 
with two imperious wills diametrically opposed to each other? 
You will be either the tyrant or the victim, and either alterna- 
tive means, for a wife, an equal sum of misfortune. But you 
are modest and sweet-natured, you would yield from the first. 
In short,” he added, in a quivering voice, “there is a grace 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


15 


of feeling in you which would never be valued, and then ” 

he broke off, for the tears overcame him. 

“ Victor will give you pain through all the girlish qualities 
of your young nature,” he went on, after a pause. “ I know 
what soldiers are, my Julie ; I have been in the army. In a 
man of that kind, love very seldom gets the better of old 
habits, due partly to the miseries amid which soldiers live, 
partly to the risks they run in a life of adventure.” 

“ Then do you mean to cross my inclinations, do you, 
father?” asked Julie, half in earnest, half in jest. “Am I to 
marry to please you and not to please myself? ” 

“ To please me ! ” cried her father, with a start of surprise. 
“To please ///<?, child? when you will not hear the voice that 
upbraids you so tenderly very much longer ! But I have always 
heard children impute personal motives for the sacrifices that 
their parents make for them. Marry Victor, my Julie ! Some 
day you will bitterly deplore his ineptitude, his thriftless ways, 
his selfishness, his lack of delicacy, his inability to understand 
love, and countless troubles arising through him. Then, re- 
member, that here, under these trees, your old father’s pro- 
phetic voice sounded in your ears in vain.” 

He said no more ; he had detected a rebellious shake of the 
head on his daughter’s part. Both made several paces toward 
the carriage which was waiting for them at the grating. 
During that interval of silence, the young girl stole a glance 
at her father’s face, and, little by little, her sullen brow 
cleared. The intense pain visible on his bowed forehead 
made a lively impression upon her. 

“Father,” she began in gentle, tremulous tones, “I promise 
to say no more about Victor until you have overcome your 
prejudices against him.” 

The old man looked at her in amazement. Two tears 
which filled his eyes overflowed down his withered cheeks. 
He could not take Julie in his arms in that crowded place ; 
but he pressed her hand tenderly. A few minutes later, when 


16 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


they had taken their places in the cabriolet, all the anxious 
bought which had gathered about his brow had completely 
disappeared. Julie’s pensive attitude gave him far less con- 
cern than the innocent joy which had betrayed her secret 
during the review. 

Nearly a year had passed since the Emperor’s last review. 
In early March, 1814, a caleche* was rolling along the high 
road from Amboise to Tours. As the carriage came out from 
beneath the green-roofed aisle of walnut-trees by the post-house 
of La Frilliere, the horses dashed forward with such speed that 
in a moment they gained the bridge built across the Cise at 
the point of its confluence with the Loire. There, however, 
they came to a sudden stand. One of the traces had given 
way in consequence of the furious pace at which the post-boy, 
obedient to his orders, had urged on four horses, the most 
vigorous of their breed. Chance, therefore, gave the two re- 
cently awakened occupants of the carriage an opportunity of 
seeing one of the most lovely landscapes along the enchanting 
banks of the Loire, and that at their full leisure. 

At a glance the travelers could see to the right the whole 
winding course of the Cise meandering like a silver snake 
among the meadows, where the grass had taken the deep, 
bright green of early spring. To the left lay the Loire in all 
its glory. A chill morning breeze, ruffling the surface of the 
stately river, had fretted the broad sheets of water far and 
wide into a network of ripples, which caught the gleams of the 
sun, so that the green islets here and there in its course shone 
like gems set in a gold necklace. On the opposite bank the 
fair rich meadows of Touraine stretched away as far as the eye 
could see ; the low hills of the Cher, the only limits to the 
view, lay on the far horizon, a luminous line against the clear 
blue sky. Tours itself, framed by the trees on the islands in 
a setting of spring leaves, seemed to rise like Venice out of 
* Open carriage. 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


17 


the waters, and her old cathedral towers soaring in air were 
blended with the pale fantastic cloud shapes in the sky. 

Over the side of the bridge, where the carriage had come to fj 
a stand, the traveler looks along a line of cliffs stretching as 
far as Tours, Nature in some freakish mood must have raised 
these barriers of rock, undermined incessantly by the rippling 
Loire at their feet, for a perpetual wonder for spectators. 
The village of Vouvray nestles, as it were, among the clefts 
and crannies of the crags, which begin to describe a bend at 
the junction of the Loire and Cise. A whole population of 
vine-dressers lives, in fact, in appalling insecurity in holes 
in their jagged sides for the whole way between Vouvray and 
Tours. In some places there are three tiers of dwellings hol- 
lowed out, one above the other, in the rock, each row com- 
municating with the next by dizzy staircases cut likewise in 
the face of the cliff. A little girl in a short, red petticoat 
runs out into her garden on the roof of another dwelling ; you 
can watch a wreath of hearth-smoke curling up among the 
shoots and trails of the vines. Men are at work in their almost 
perpendicular patches of ground, an old woman sits tranquilly 
spinning under a blossoming almond tree on a crumbling 
mass of rock, and smiles down on the dismay of the travelers 
far below her feet. The cracks in the ground trouble her as 
little as the precarious state of the old wall, a pendent mass 
of loose stones, only kept in position by the crooked stems 
of its ivy mantle. The sound of coopers’ mallets rings 
through the skyey caves ; for here, where Nature stints human 
industry of soil, the soil is everywhere tilled, and everywhere 
fertile. 

No view along the whole course of the Loire can compare 
with the rich landscape of Touraine, here outspread beneath 
the traveler’s eyes. The triple picture, thus barely sketched 
in outline, is one of those scenes which the imagination en- 
graves for ever upon the memory ; let a poet fall under its 
charm, and he shall be haunted by visions which will re- 
2 


18 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


produce its romantic loveliness out of the vague substance of 
dreams. 

As the carriage stopped on the bridge over the Cise, white 
sails came out here and there from among the islands in the 
Loire to add new grace to the perfect view. The subtle scent 
of the willows by the water’s edge was mingled with the damp 
odor of the breeze from the river. The monotonous chant of 
a goatherd added a plaintive note to the sound of birds’ songs 
in a chorus which never ends ; the cries of the boatmen 
brought tidings of distant busy life. Here was Touraine in 
all its glory, and the very height of the splendor of spring. 
Here was the one peaceful district in France in those troublous 
days; for it was so unlikely that a foreign army should trouble 
its quiet that Touraine might be said to defy invasion. 

As soon as the caliche stopped, a head covered with a 
foraging cap was put out of the window, and soon afterward 
an impatient military man flung open the carriage-door and 
sprang down into the road to pick a quarrel with the postil- 
lion, but the skill with which the Tourangeau was repairing 
the trace restored Colonel d’Aiglemont’s equanimity. He 
went back to the carriage, stretched himself to relieve his be- 
numbed muscles, yawned, looked about him, and finally laid 
a hand on the arm of a young woman warmly wrapped up in 
a furred pelisse. 

“Come, Julie,” he said hoarsely, “just wake up and take 
a look at this country. It is magnificent.” 

Julie put her head out of the window. She wore a traveling 
cap of sable fur. Nothing could be seen of her but her face, 
for the whole of her person was completely concealed by the 
folds of her fur pelisse. The young girl who tripped to the 
review at the Tuileries with light footsteps and joy and glad- 
ness in her heart was scarcely recognizable in Julie d’Aigle- 
mont. Her face, delicate as ever, had lost the rose-color 
which once gave it so rich a glow. A few straggling locks 
of black hair, straightened out by the damp night-air, en- 


a woman of thirty. 


19 


hanced its dead whiteness, and all its life and sparkle seemed 
to be torpid. Yet her eyes glittered with preternatural bright- 
ness in spite of the violet shadows under the lashes upon her 
wan cheeks. 

She looked out with indifferent eyes over the fields toward 
the Cher, at the islands in the river, at the line of the crags 
of Vouvray stretching along the Loire toward Tours; then 
she sank back as soon as possible into her seat in the caliche. 
She did not care to give a glance to the enchanting valley of 
the Cise. 

“ Yes, it is wonderful, ” she said, and out in the open air 
her voice sounded weak and faint to the last degree. Evi- 
dently she had had her way with her father, to her misfortune. 

“ Would you not like to live here, Julie ? ” 

“ Yes; here or anywhere,” she answered listlessly. 

“Do you feel ill?” asked Colonel d’Aiglemont. 

“No, not at all,” she answered with momentary energy ; 
and, smiling at her husband, she added, “ I should like to go 
to sleep.” 

Suddenly there came a sound of a horse galloping toward 
them. Victor d’Aiglemont dropped his wife’s hand and turned 
to watch the bend in the road. No sooner had he taken 
his eyes from Julie’s pale face than all the assumed gayety 
died out of it ; it was as if a light had been extinguished. 
She felt no wish to look at the landscape, no curiosity to see 
the horseman who was galloping toward them at such a furious 
pace, and, ensconcing herself in her corner, stared out before 
her at the hindquarters of the post-horses, looking as blank as 
any Breton peasant listening to his rector’s sermon. 

Suddenly a young man riding a valuable horse came out 
from behind the clump of poplars and flowering briar-rose. 

“It is an Englishman,” remarked the colonel. 

“Lord bless you, yes, general,” said the post-boy; “he 
belongs to the race of fellows who have a mind to gobble up 
France, they say.” 


20 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


The stranger was one of the foreigners traveling in France 
at the time when Napoleon detained all British subjects within 
the limits of the Empire, by way of reprisals for the violation 
of the Treaty of Amiens, an outrage of international law per- 
petrated by the court of St. James, These prisoners, com- 
pelled to submit to the Emperor’s pleasure, were not all 
suffered to remain in the houses where they were arrested^ nor 
yet in the places of residence which at first they were per- 
mitted to choose. Most of the English colony in Touraine 
had been transplanted thither from different places where 
their presence was supposed to be inimical to the interests of 
the Continental Policy. 

The young man, who was taking the tedium off the early 
morning hours on horseback, was one of these victims of 
bureaucratic tyranny. Two years previously, a sudden order 
from the Foreign Office had dragged him from Montpellier, 
whither he had gone on account of consumptive tendencies. 
He glanced at the Comte d’Aigleinont, saw that he was a 
military man, and deliberately looked away, turning his head 
somewhat abruptly toward the meadows by the Cise. 

“ The English are all as insolent as if the globe belonged 
to them,” muttered the colonel. “ Luckily, Soult will give 
them a thrashing directly.” 

The prisoner gave a glance to the caleche as he rode by. 
Brief though that glance was, he had yet time to notice the 
sad expression which lent an indefinable charm to the coun- 
tess’ pensive face. Many men are deeply moved by the mere 
semblance of suffering in a woman ; they take the look of 
pain for a sign of constancy or of love. Julie herself was so 
much absorbed in the contemplation of the opposite cushion 
that she saw neither the horse nor the rider. The damaged 
trace meanwhile had been quickly and strongly repaired ; the 
count stepped into his place again ; and the post-boy, doing 
his best to make up for lost time, drove the carriage rapidly 
along the embankment. On they drove under the overhang- 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY, 


21 


ing cliffs, with their picturesque vine-dressers’ huts and stores 
of wine maturing in their dark sides, till in the distance 
uprose the spire of the famous abbey of Marmoutiers, the re- 
treat of St. Martin. 

“What can that diaphanous milord want with us?” ex- 
claimed the colonel, turning to assure himself that the horse- 
man who had followed them from the bridge was the young 
Englishman. 

After all, the stranger committed no breach of good man- 
ners by riding along on the footway, and Colonel d’Aiglemont 
was fain to lie back in his corner after sending a scowl in the 
Englishman’s direction. But in spite of his hostile instincts, 
he could not help noticing the beauty of the animal and the 
graceful horsemanship of the rider. The young man’s face 
was of that pale, fair-complexioned, insular type, which is 
almost girlish in the softness and delicacy of its color and 
texture. He was tall, thin, and fair-haired, dressed with the 
extreme and elaborate neatness characteristic of a man of 
fashion in prudish England. Any one might have thought 
that bashfulness rather than pleasure at the sight of the countess 
had called up that flush into his face. Once only Julie raised 
her eyes and looked at the stranger, and then only because 
she was in a manner compelled to do so, for her husband 
called upon her to admire the action of the thoroughbred. 
It so happened that their glances clashed; and the shy 
Englishman, instead of riding abreast of the carriage, fell 
behind on this, and followed them at a distance of a few 
paces. 

Yet the countess had scarcely given him a glance ; she saw 
none of the various perfections, human and equine, com- 
mended to her notice, and fell back again in the carriage 
with a slight movement of the eyelids intended to express her 
acquiescence in her husband’s views. The colonel fell asleep 
again, and both husband and wife reached Tours without 
another word. Not one of those enchanting views of ever- 


22 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


changing landscape through which they sped had drawn so 
much as a glance from Julie’s eyes. 

Mme. d’Aiglemont looked now and again at her sleeping 
husband. While she looked, a sudden jolt shook something 
down upon her knees. It was her father’s portrait, a miniature 
which she wore suspended about her neck by a black cord. 
At the sight of it, the tears, till then kept back, overflowed 
her eyes, but no one, save perhaps the Englishman, saw them 
glitter there for a brief moment before they dried upon her 
pale cheeks. 

Colonel d’Aiglemont was on his way to the South. Marshal 
Soult was repelling an English invasion of Bearn ; and d’Aigle- 
mont, the bearer of the Emperor’s orders to the marshal, 
seized the opportunity of taking his wife as far as Tours to 
leave her with an elderly relative of his own, far away from 
the dangers threatening Paris. 

Very shortly the carriage rolled over the paved road of 
Tours, over the bridge, along the Grande-Rue, and stopped 
at last before the old mansion of the ci-devant Marquise de 
Listomere-Landon. 

The Marquise de Listomere-Landon, with her white hair, 
pale face, and shrewd smile, was one of those fine old ladies 
who still seem to wear the paniers of the eighteenth century, 
and affect caps of an extinct mode. They are nearly always 
caressing in their manner, as if the heyday of love still lin- 
gered on for these septuagenarian portraits of the age of 
Louis Quinze, with the taint perfume of marshal powder al- 
ways clinging about them. Bigoted rather than pious, and 
less of bigots than they seem, women who can tell a story well 
and talk still better, their laughter comes more readily for an 
old memory than for a new jest — the present intrudes upon 
them. 

When an old waiting-woman announced to the Marquise de 
Listomere-Landon (to give her the title which she was soon 
to resume) the arrival of a nephew whom she had not seen 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


23 


since the outbreak of the war with Spain, the old lady took 
off her spectacles with alacrity, shut the “ Galerie de l’ancienne 
Cour ” (her favorite work), and recovered something like 
youthful activity, hastening out upon the flight of steps to greet 
the young couple there. 

Aunt and niece exchanged a rapid glance of survey. 

“Good-morning, dear aunt,” cried the colonel, giving the 
old lady a hasty embrace. “ I am bringing a young lady to 
put under your wing. I have come to put my treasure in your 
keeping. My Julie is neither jealous nor a coquette, she is 
as good as an angel. I hope that she will not be spoiled here,” 
he added, suddenly interrupting himself. 

“Scapegrace!” returned the marquise, with a satirical 
glance at her nephew. 

She did not wait for her niece to approach her, but with a 
certain kindly graciousness went forward herself to kiss Julie, 
who stood there thoughtfully, to all appearance more embar- 
rassed than curious concerning her new relation. 

“ So we are to make each other’s acquaintance, are we, my 
love? ” the marquise continued. “ Do not be too much 
alarmed of me. I always try not to be an old woman with 
young people.” 

On the way to the drawing-room, the marquise ordered 
breakfast for her guests in provincial fashion ; but the count 
checked his aunt’s flow of words by saying soberly that he 
could only remain in the house while the horses were changing. 
On this the three hurried into the drawing-room. The colonel 
had barely time to tell the story of the political and military 
events which had compelled him to ask his aunt for a shelter 
for his young wife. While he talked on without interruption, 
the older lady looked from her nephew to her niece, and took 
the sadness in Julie’s white face for grief at the enforced sepa- 
ration. “ Eh ! eh ! ” her looks seemed to say, “ these young 
things are in love with each other.” 

The crack of the postillion’s whip sounded outside in the 


24 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


silent old grass-grown courtyard. Victor embraced his aunt 
once more and rushed out. 

“ Good-by, dear,” he said, kissing his wife, who had fol- 
lowed him down to the carriage. 

“Oh! Victor, let me come still farther with you,” she 
pleaded coaxingly. “I do not want to leave you ” 

“ Can you seriously mean it? ” 

“Very well,” said Julie, “since you wish it.” The car- 
riage disappeared. 

“ So you are very fond of my poor Victor? ” said the mar- 
quise, interrogating her niece with one of those sagacious 
glances which dowagers give younger women. 

“Alas, madame ! ” said Julie, “ must one not love a man 
well indeed to marry him ? ” 

The words were spoken with an artless accent which re- 
vealed either a pure heart or inscrutable depths. How could 
a woman, who had been the friend of Duclos and the Marechal 
de Richelieu, refrain from trying to read the riddle of this 
marriage? Aunt and niece were standing on the steps, gaz- 
ing after the fast-vanishing caldche. The look in the young 
countess’ eyes did not mean love as the marquise understood 
it. The good lady was a Provenqale, and her passions had 
been lively. 

“ So you were captivated by my good-for-nothing of a 
nephew?” she asked. 

Involuntarily Julie shuddered, something in the experienced 
coquette’s look and tone seemed to say that Mme. de Listo- 
mdre-Landon’s knowledge of her husband’s character went 
perhaps deeper than his wife’s. Mme. d’Aiglemont, in dis- 
may, took refuge in this transparent dissimulation, ready to 
her hand, the first resource of an artless unhappiness. Mme. 
de Listom£re appeared to be satisfied with Julie’s answers ; but 
in her secret heart she rejoiced to think that here was a love 
affair on hand to enliven her solitude, for that her niece had 
some amusing flirtation on foot she was fully convinced. 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


25 


In the great drawing-room, hung with tapestry framed in 
strips of gilding, young Mme. d’Aiglemont sat before a blaz- 
ing fire, behind a Chinese screen placed to shut out the cold 
draughts from the windows, and her heavy mood scarcely 
lightened. Among the old eighteenth-century furniture, under 
the antique paneled ceiling, it was not very easy to be gay. 
Yet the young Parisienne took a sort of pleasure in this en- 
trance upon a life of complete solitude and in the solemn 
silence of the old provincial house. She exchanged a few 
words with the aunt, a stranger, to whom she had written a 
bride’s letter on her marriage, and then sat as silent as if she 
had been listening to an opera. Not until two hours had been 
spent in an atmosphere of quiet befitting La Trappe did she 
suddenly awaken to a sense of uncourteous behavior, and be- 
think herself of the short answers which she had given her aunt. 
Mme. de Listom6re, with the gracious tact characteristic of a 
bygone age, had respected her niece’s mood. When Mme. 
d’Aiglemont became conscious of her shortcomings, the dow- 
ager sat knitting, though as a matter of fact she had several 
times left the room to superintend preparations in the Green 
Chamber, whither the countess’ luggage had been transported ; 
now, however, she had returned to her great armchair, and 
stole a glance from time to time at this young relative. Julie 
felt ashamed of giving way to irresistible broodings, and tried 
to earn her pardon by laughing at herself. 

“ My dear child, we know the sorrows of widowhood,” re- 
turned her aunt. But only the eyes of forty years could 
have distinguished the irony hovering about the old lady’s 
mouth. 

Next morning the countess improved. She talked. Mme. 
de Listomere no longer despaired of fathoming the new-made 
wife, whom yesterday she had set down as a dull, unsociable 
creature, and discoursed on the delights of the country, of 
dances, of houses where they could visit. All that day the mar- 
quise’s questions were so many snares ; it was the old habit of 

B 


26 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


the old court, she could not help setting traps to discover her 
niece’s character. For several days Julie, plied with tempta- 
tions, steadfastly declined to seek amusement abroad ; and 
much as the old lady’s pride longed to exhibit her pretty 
niece, she was fain to renounce all hope of taking her into 
society, for the young countess was still in mourning for her 
father, and found in her loss and her mourning dress a pretext 
for her sadness and desire for seclusion. 

By the end of a week the dowager admired Julie’s angelic 
sweetness of disposition, her diffident charm, her indulgent 
temper, and thenceforward began to take a prodigious interest 
in the mysterious sadness gnawing at this young heart. The 
countess was one of those women who seem born to be loved 
and to bring happiness with them. Mme. de Listomere found 
her niece’s society grown so sweet and precious that she doted 
upon Julie, and could no longer think of- parting with her. 
A month sufficed to establish an eternal friendship between 
the two ladies. The dowager noticed, not without surprise, 
the changes that took place in Mme. d’Aiglemont; gradually 
her bright color died away and her face became dead white. 
Yet, Julie’s spirits rose as the bloom faded from her cheeks. 
Sometimes the dowager’s sallies provoked outbursts of merri- 
ment or peals of laughter, promptly repressed, however, by 
some clamorous thought. 

Mme. de Listomere had guessed by this time that it was 
neither Victor’s absence nor a father’s death which threw a 
shadow over her niece’s life ; but her mind was so full of dark 
suspicions that she found it difficult to lay a finger upon the 
real cause of the mischief. Possibly truth is only discover- 
able by chance. A day came, however, at length when Julie 
flashed out before her aunt’s astonished eyes into a complete 
forgetfulness of her marriage ; she recovered the wild spirits 
of careless girlhood. Mme. de Listomere then and there 
made up her mind to fathom the depths of this soul, for its 
exceeding simplicity was as inscrutable as dissimulation. 


A WOMAN- OF THIRTY. 


27 


Night was falling. The two ladies were sitting by the win- 
dow which looked out upon the street, and Julie was looking 
thoughtful again, when some one went by on horseback. 

“ There goes one of your victims,” said the marquise. 

Mme. d* Aiglemont looked up ; dismay and surprise blended 
in her face. 

“ He is a prim young Englishman, the Honorable Arthur 
Ormond, Lord Grenville’s eldest son. His history is inter- 
esting. His physicians sent him to Montpellier in 1802; it 
was hoped that in that climate he might recover from the 
lung complaint which was gaining ground. He was detained, 
like all his fellow-countrymen, by Buonaparte when war broke 
out. That monster cannot live without fighting. The young 
Englishman, by way of amusing himself, took to studying his 
own complaint, which was believed to be incurable. By de- 
grees he acquired a liking for anatomy and physic, and took 
quite a craze for that kind of thing, a most extraordinary taste 
in a man of quality, though the Regent certainly amused him- 
self with chemistry ! In short, Monsieur Arthur made aston- 
ishing progress in his studies ; his health did the same under 
the faculty of Montpellier ; he consoled his captivity, and at 
the same time his cure was thoroughly completed. They say 
that he spent two whole years in a cowshed, living on cresses 
and the milk of a cow brought from Switzerland, breathing as 
seldom as he could, and never speaking a word. Since he 
came to Tours he has lived quite alone; he is as proud as a 
peacock; but you have certainly made a conquest of him, for 
probably it is not on my account that he has ridden under the 
window twice every day since you have been here. He has 
certainly fallen in love with you.” 

That last phrase roused the countess like magic. Her in- 
voluntary start and smile took the marquise by surprise. So 
far from showing a sign of the instinctive satisfaction felt by 
the most strait-laced of women when she learns that she has 
destroyed the peace of mind of some male victim, there was a 


28 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


hard, haggard expression in Julie's face — a look of repulsion 
amounting almost to loathing. 

A woman who loves will put the whole world under the ban 
of Love’s empire for the sake of the one whom she loves ; but 
such a woman can laugh and jest; and Julie at that moment 
looked as if the memory of some recently escaped peril was 
too sharp and fresh not to bring with it a quick sensation of 
pain. Her aunt, by this time convinced that Julie did not 
love her nephew, was stupefied by the discovery that she loved 
nobody else. She shuddered lest a further discovery should 
show her Julie’s heart disenchanted, lest the experience of a 
day, or perhaps of a night, should have revealed to a young 
wife the full extent of Victor’s emptiness. 

“ If she has found him out, there is an end of it,” thought 
the dowager. “ My nephew will soon be made to feel the 
inconveniences of wedded life.” 

The marquise now proposed to convert Julie to the monarch- 
ical doctrines of the times of Louis Quinze; but a few hours 
later she discovered, or, more properly speaking, guessed, the 
not uncommon state of affairs, and the real cause of her niece’s 
low spirits. 

Julie turned thoughtful on a sudden, and went to her room 
earlier than usual. When her maid left her for the night, 
she still sat by the fire in the yellow velvet depths of a great 
chair, an old-world piece of furniture as well suited for sorrow 
as for happy people. Tears flowed, followed by sighs and 
meditation. After a while she drew a little table to her, 
sought writing materials, and began to write. The hours 
went by swiftly. Julie’s confidences made to the sheet of 
paper seemed to cost her dear ; every sentence set her dream- 
ing, and at last she suddenly burst into tears. The clocks 
were striking two. Her head, grown heavy as a dying 
woman’s, was bowed over her breast. When she raised it, 
her aunt appeared before her as suddenly as if she had stepped 
out of the background of tapestry upon the walls. 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


29 


‘‘What ca^ be the matter with you, child?” asked the 
marquise. “Why are you sitting u'' so late? And why, in 
the first place, are you crying alone, at your age?” 

Without further ceremony she sat down beside her niece, 
her eyes the while devouring the unfinished letter. 

“ Were you writing to your husband ? ” 

“ Do I know where he is?” returned the countess. 

Her aunt thereupon took up the sheet and proceeded to 
read it. She had brought her spectacles ; the deed was pre- 
meditated. The innocent writer of the letter allowed her to 
take it without the slightest remark. It was neither lack of 
dignity nor consciousness of secret guilt which left her thus 
without energy. Her aunt had come in upon her at a crisis. 
She was helpless ; right or wrong, reticence and confidence, 
like all things else, were matters of indifference. Like some 
young maid who has heaped scorn upon her lover, and feels 
so lonely and sad when evening comes that she longs for him 
to come back or for a heart to which she can pour out her 
sorrow, Julie allowed her aunt to violate the seal which honor 
places upon an open letter, and sat musing while the marquise 
read on : 

“ My dear Louisa : — Why do you ask so often for the fulfill- 
ment of as rash a promise as two young and inexperienced 
girls could make ? You say that you often ask yourself why 
I have given no answer to your questions for these six months. 
If my silence told you nothing, perhaps you will understand 
the reasons for it to-day, as you read the secrets which I am 
about to betray. I should have buried them for ever in the 
depths of my heart if you had not announced your own ap- 
proaching marriage. You are about to be married, Louisa. 
The thought makes me shiver. Poor little one ! marry, yes, 
and in a few months’ time one of the keenest pangs of regret 
will be the recollection of a self which used to be, of the two 
young girls who sat one evening under one of the tallest oak- 


•30 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


trees on the hillside at Ecouen, and looked along the fair 
valley at our feet in the light of the sunset, which caught us 
in its glow. We sat on a slab of rock in ecstasy, which 
sobered down into melancholy of the gentlest. You were the 
first to discover that the far-off sun spoke to us of the future. 
How inquisitive and how silly we were ! Do you remember 
all the absurd things we said and did? We embraced each 
other; Mike lovers,’ said we. We solemnly promised that 
the first bride should faithfully reveal to the other the mys- 
teries of marriage, the joys which our childish minds imagined 
to be so delicious. That evening will complete your despair, 
Louisa. In those days you were young and beautiful and 
careless, if not radiantly happy ; a few days of marriage, and 
you will be, what I am already — ugly, wretched, and old. 
Need I tell you how proud I was and how vain and glad to be 
married to Colonel Victor d’Aiglemont? And, beside, how 
could I tell you now? for I cannot remember that old self. 
A few moments turned my girlhood to a dream. All through 
the memorable day which consecrated a chain, the extent of 
which was hidden from me, my behavior was not free from 
reproach. Once and again my father tried to repress my 
spirits ; the joy which I showed so plainly was thought unbe- 
fitting the occasion, my talk scarcely innocent, simply because 
I was so innocent. I played endless child’s tricks with my 
bridal veil, my wreath, my gown. Left alone that night in the 
room whither I had been conducted in state, I planned a piece 
of mischief to tease Victor. While I awaited his coming, my 
heart beat wildly, as it used to do when I was a child stealing 
into the drawing-room on the last day of the old year to catch 
a glimpse of the New Year’s gifts piled up there in heaps. 
When my husband came in and looked for me, my smothered 
laughter, ringing out from beneath the lace in which I had 
shrouded myself, was the last outburst of the delicious merri- 
ment which brightened our games in childhood ” 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


31 


When the dowager had finished reading the letter, and 
after such a beginning the rest must have been sad indeed, 
she slowly laid her spectacles on the table, put the letter down 
beside them, and looked fixedly at her niece. Age had not 
dimmed the fire in those green eyes as yet. 

“ My little girl,” she said, “ a married woman cannot write 
such a letter as this to a young unmarried woman ; it is 
scarcely proper ” 

“So I was thinking,” Julie broke in upon her aunt. “I 
felt ashamed of myself while you were reading it.” 

“ If a dish at table is not to our taste, there is no occasion 
to disgust others with it, child,” the old lady continued be- 
nignly, “especially when marriage has seemed to us all, from 
Eve downward, so excellent an institution. You have no 
mother? ” 

The countess trembled, then she raised her face meekly, 
and said — 

“ I have missed my mother many times already during the 
past year ; but I have myself to blame, I would not listen to 
my father. He was opposed to my marriage ; he disapproved 
of Victor as a son-in-law.” 

She looked at her aunt. The old face was lighted up with 
a kindly look, and a thrill of joy dried Julie’s tears. She held 
out her young, soft hand to the old marquise, who seemed to 
ask for it, and the understanding between the two women was 
completed by the close grasp of their fingers. 

“ Poor orphan child ! ” 

The words came like a final flash of enlightenment to Julie. 
It seemed to her that she heard her father’s prophetic voice 
again. 

“Your hands are burning! Are they always like this?” 
asked the marquise. 

“ The fever only left me seven or eight days ago.” 

“You had a fever upon you, and said nothing about it to 


32 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


“ I have had it for a year,” said Julie, with a kind of timid 
anxiety. 

“ My good little angel, then your married life hitherto has 
been one long time of suffering ? ” 

Julie did not venture to reply, but an affirmative sign 
revealed the whole truth. 

“ Then you are unhappy? ” 

‘‘Oh! no, no, aunt. Victor loves me, he almost idolizes 
me, and I adore him, he is so kind.” 

“ Yes, you love him ; but you avoid him, do you not ? ” 

“Yes sometimes. He seeks me too often.” 

“And often when you are alone you are troubled with the 
fear that he may suddenly break- in upon your solitude? ” 

“Alas! yes, aunt. But, indeed, I love him, I do assure 
you.” 

“ Do you not, in your own thoughts, blame yourself because 
you find it impossible to share his pleasures ? Do you never 
think at times that marriage is a heavier yoke than an illicit 
passion could be? ” 

“ Oh ! that is just it,” she wept. “ It is all a riddle to me, 
and can you guess it all? My faculties are benumbed, I have 
no ideas, I can scarcely see at all. I am weighed down by 
vague dread, which freezes me till I cannot feel, and keeps 
me in continual torpor. I have no voice with which to pity 
myself, no words to express my trouble. I suffer, and I am 
ashamed to suffer when Victor is happy at my cost.” 

“Babyish nonsense and rubbish, all of it ! ” exclaimed the 
aunt, and a gay smile, an after-glow of the joys of her own 
youth, suddenly lighted up her withered face. 

“And do you too laugh!” the younger woman cried 
despairingly. 

“ It was just my own case,” the marquise returned promptly. 
“ And now that Victor has left you, you have become a girl 
again, recovering a tranquillity without pleasure and without 
pain, have you not ? ” 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


33 


Julie opened wide eyes of bewilderment. 

“ In fact, my angel, you adore Victor, do you not? But 
still you would rather be a sister to him than a wife, and, in 
short, your marriage is emphatically not a success?” 

“ Well — no, aunt. But why do you smile?” 

“ Oh ! you are right, poor child ! There is nothing very 
amusing in all this. Your future would be big with more than 
one mishap if I had not taken you under my protection, if 
my old experience of life had not guessed the very innocent 
cause of your troubles. My nephew did not deserve his good- 
fortune, the blockhead ! In the reign of our well-beloved 
Louis Quinze, a young wife in your position would very soon 
have punished her husband for behaving like a ruffian. The 
selfish creature ! The men who serve under this Imperial 
tyrant are all of them ignorant boors. They take brutality 
for gallantry ; they know no more of women than they know of 
love ; and imagine that, because they go out to face death on 
the morrow, they may dispense to-day with all consideration 
and attentions for us. The time was when a man could love 
and die too at the proper time. My niece, I will form you. 
I will put an end to this unhappy divergence between you, a 
natural thing enough, but it would end in mutual hatred and 
desire for a divorce, always supposing that you did not die on 
the way to despair.” 

Julie’s amazement equaled her surprise as she listened to 
her aunt. She was surprised by her language, dimly divining 
rather than appreciating the wisdom of the words she heard, 
and very much dismayed to find that this relative, out of a 
great experience, passed judgment upon Victor as her father 
had done, though in somewhat milder terms. Perhaps some 
quick prevision of the future crossed her mind ; doubtless, at 
any rate, she felt the heavy weight of the burden which must 
inevitably overwhelm her, for she burst into tears and sprang 
to the old lady’s arms. “ Be my mother,” she sobbed. 

The aunt shed no tears. The Revolution had left old ladies 
3 


34 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


of the Monarchy but few tears to shed. Love, in bygone 
days, and the Terror at a later time, had familiarized them 
with extremes of joy and anguish in such a sort that, amid the 
perils of life, they preserved their dignity and coolness, a 
capacity for sincere but undemonstrative affection which 
never disturbed their well-bred self-possession, and a dignity 
of demeanor which a younger generation has done very ill to 
discard. 

The dowager took Julie in her arms and kissed her on the 
forehead with a tenderness and pity more often found in 
women’s ways and manner than in their hearts. Then she 
coaxed her niece with kind, soothing words, assured her of a 
happy future, lulled her with promises of love, and put her to 
bed as if she had not been a niece, but a daughter, a much- 
loved daughter whose hopes and cares she had made her own. 
Perhaps the old marquise had found her own youth and inex- 
perience and beauty again in this nephew’s wife. And the 
countess fell asleep, happy to have found a friend, nay, a 
mother, to whom she could tell everything freely. 

Next morning, when the two women kissed each other with 
heartfelt kindness, and that look of intelligence which marks 
a real advance in friendship, a closer intimacy between two 
souls, they heard the sound of horsehoofs, and, turning both 
together, saw the young Englishman ride slowly past the 
window, after his wont. Apparently he had made a certain 
study of the life led by the two lonely women, for he never 
failed to ride by as they sat at breakfast, and again at dinner. 
His horse slackened pace of its own accord, and, for the space 
of time required to pass the two windows in the room, its 
rider turned a melancholy look upon the countess, who seldom 
deigned to take the slightest notice of him. Not so the mar- 
quise. Minds not necessarily little find it difficult to resist the 
little curiosity which fastens upon the most trifling event that 
enlivens provincial life ; and the Englishman’s mute way of 
expressing his timid, earnest love tickled Mme. de Listomere. 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


35 


For her the periodically recurrent glance became a part of 
the day’s routine, hailed daily with new jests. As the two 
women sat down to table, both of them looked out at the same 
moment. This time Julie’s eyes met Arthur’s with such a 
precision of sympathy that the color rose to her face. The 
stranger immediately urged his horse into a gallop and went. 

“What is to be done, madame?” asked Julie. “People 
see this Englishman go past the house, and they will take it 
for granted that I ” 

“Yes,” interrupted her aunt. 

“ Well, then, could I not tell him to discontinue his prom- 
enades? ” 

“ Would not that be a way of telling him that he was dan- 
gerous ? You might put that notion into his head. And, beside, 
can you prevent a man from coming and going as he pleases? 
Our meals shall be served in another room to-morrow ; and, 
when this young gentleman sees us no longer, there will be an 
end of making love to you through the window. There, dear 
child, that is how a woman of the world does.” 

But the measure of Julie’s misfortune was to be filled. The 
two women had scarcely risen from table when Victor’s man 
arrived in hot haste from Bourges with a letter for the countess 
from her husband. The servant had ridden by unfrequented 
ways. 

Victor sent his wife news of the downfall of the Empire 
and the capitulation of Paris. He himself had gone over to 
the Bourbons, and all France was welcoming them back with 
transports of enthusiasm. He could not go so far as Tours, 
but he begged her to come at once to join him at Orleans, 
where he hoped to be in readiness with passports for her. 
His servant, an old soldier, would be her escort as far as Or- 
leans ; he (Victor) believed that the road was still open. 

“You have not a moment to lose, madame,” said the man. 
“ The Prussians, Austrians, and English are about to effect a 
junction either at Blois or at Orleans.” 


36 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


A few hours later, Julie’s preparations were made, and she 
started out upon her journey in an old traveling carriage lent 
by her aunt. 

“ Why should you not come with us to Paris? ” she asked, 
as she put her arms about the marquise. “Now that the 
Bourbons have come back, you would be ” 

“ Even if there had not been this unhoped-for return, I 
should still have gone to Paris, my poor child, for my advice 
is only too necessary to both you and Victor. So I shall 
make all my preparations for rejoining you there.” 

Julie set out. She took her maid with her, and the old 
soldier galloped beside the carriage as escort. At nightfall, 
as they changed horses for the last stage before Blois, Julie 
grew uneasy. All the way from Amboise she had heard the 
sound of wheels behind them, a carriage following hers had 
kept at the same distance. She stood on the step and looked 
out to see who her traveling companions might be, and in the 
moonlight saw Arthur standing three paces away, gazing 
fixedly at the chaise which contained her. Again their eyes 
met. The countess hastily flung herself back in her seat, but 
a feeling of dread set her pulses throbbing. It seemed to her, 
as to most innocent and inexperienced young wives, that she 
was herself to blame for this love which she had all unwit- 
tingly inspired. With this thought came an instinctive terror, 
perhaps a sense of her own helplessness before aggressive 
audacity. One of a man’s strongest weapons is the terrible 
power of compelling a woman to think of him when her 
naturally lively imagination takes alarm or offense at the 
thought that she is followed. 

The countess bethought herself of her aunt’s advice, and 
made up her mind that she would not stir from her place 
during the rest of the journey ; but every time the horses were 
changed she heard the Englishman pacing round the two car- 
riages, and again upon the road heard the importunate sound 
of the wheels of his caleche. Julie soon began to think that, 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


37 


when once reunited to her husband, Victor would know how 
to defend her against this singular persecution. 

“ Yet suppose that, in spite of everything, this young man 
does not love me?” This was the thought that came last 
of all. 

No sooner did she reach Orleans than the Prussians stopped 
the chaise. It was wheeled into an innyard and put under a 
guard of soldiers. Resistance was out of the question. The 
foreign soldiers made the three travelers understand by signs 
that they were obeying orders, and that no one could be 
allowed to leave the carriage. For about two hours the 
countess sat in tears, a prisoner surrounded by the guard, 
who smoked, laughed, and occasionally stared at her with 
insolent curiosity. At last, however, she saw her captors fall 
away from the carriage with a sort of respect, and heard at 
the same time the sound of horses entering the yard. An- 
other moment, and a little group of foreign officers, with an 
Austrian general at their head, gathered about the door of 
the traveling carriage. 

“Madame,” said the general, “pray accept our apologies. 
A mistake has been made. You may continue your journey 
withour fear; and here is a passport which will spare you all 
further annoyance of any kind.” 

Tremblingly the countess took the paper and faltered out 
some vague words of thanks. She saw Arthur, now wearing 
an English uniform, standing beside the general, and could 
not doubt that this prompt deliverance was due to him. The 
young Englishman himself looked half-glad, half-melancholy; 
his face was turned away, and he only dared to steal an oc- 
casional glance at Julie’s face. 

Thanks to the passport, Mme. d’Aiglemont reached Paris 
without further misadventure, and there she found her hus- 
band. Victor d’Aiglemont, released from his oath of allegi- 
ance to the Emperor, had met with a most flattering reception 
from the Comte d ’Artois, recently appointed lieutenant-general 


38 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


of the kingdom by his brother, Louis XVIII. D’Aiglemont 
received a commission in the Life Guards, equivalent to the 
rank of general. But, amid the rejoicings over the return of 
the Bourbons, fate dealt poor Julie a terrible blow. The 
death of the Marquise de Listomere-Landon was an irreparable 
loss. The old lady died of joy and of an accession of gout to 
the heart when the Due d’Angouldme came back to Tours, 
and the one living being entitled by her age to enlighten 
Victor, the woman who, by discreet counsels, might have 
brought about perfect unanimity of husband and wife, was 
dead ; and Julie felt the full extent of her loss. Henceforward 
she must stand alone between herself and her husband. But 
she was young and timid ; there could be no doubt of the 
result, or that from the first she would elect to bear her lot in 
silence. The very perfection of her character forbade her to 
venture to swerve from her duties or to attempt to inquire 
into the cause of her sufferings, for to put an end to them 
would have been to venture on delicate ground, and Julie’s 
girlish modesty shrank from the thought. 

A word as to M. d’Aiglemont’s destinies under the Res- 
toration. 

How many men are there whose utter incapacity is a secret 
kept from most of their acquaintance. For such as these 
high rank, high office, illustrious birth, a certain veneer of 
politeness, and considerable reserve of manner, or the prestige 
of great fortunes, are but so many sentinels to turn back critics 
who would penetrate to the presence of the real man. Such 
men are like kings, in that their real figure, character, and 
life can never be known nor justly appreciated, because they 
are always seen from too near or too far. Factitious merit 
has a way of asking questions and saying little ; and under- 
stands the art of putting others forward to save the necessity 
of posing before them ; then, with a happy knack of its own, 
it draws and attaches others by the thread of the ruling passion 
or self-interest, keeping men of far greater abilities in play 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


39 


like puppets, and despising those whom it has brought down 
to its own level. The petty fixed idea naturally prevails ; it 
has the advantage of persistence over the plasticity of great 
thoughts. 

The observer who should seek to estimate and appraise the 
negative values of these empty heads needs subtlety rather 
than superior wit for the task ; patience is a more necessary 
part of his judicial outfit than great mental grasp, cunning 
and tact rather than any elevation or greatness of ideas. Yet 
skillfully as such usurpers can cover and defend their weak 
points, it is difficult to delude wife and mother and children 
and the house-friend of the family ; fortunately for them, 
however, these persons almost always keep a secret which in 
a manner touches the honor of all, and not unfrequently go 
so far as to help to foist the imposture upon the public. And 
if, thanks to such domestic conspiracy, many a noodle passes 
current for a man of ability, on the other hand many another 
who has real ability is taken for a noodle to redress the balance, 
and the total average of this kind of false coin in circulation 
in the state is a pretty constant quantity. 

Bethink yourself now of the part to be played by a clever 
woman quick to think and feel, mated with a husband of this 
kind, and can you not see a vision of lives full of sorrow and 
self-sacrifice ? Nothing upon earth can repay such hearts so 
full of love and tender tact. Put a strong-willed woman in 
this wretched situation, and she will force a way out of it for 
herself by a crime, like Catherine II., whom men nevertheless 
style “ the Great.” But these women are not all seated upon 
thrones, they are for the most part doomed to domestic un- 
happiness none the less terrible because obscure. 

Those who seek consolation in this present world for their 
woes often effect nothing but a change of ills if they remain 
faithful to their duties; or they commit a sin if they break 
the laws for their pleasure. All these reflections are applicable 
to Julie’s domestic life. 


40 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


Before the fall of Napoleon nobody was jealous of d’Aigle- 
mont. He was one colonel among many, an efficient orderly 
staff-officer, as good a man as you could find for a dangerous 
mission, as unfit as well could be for an important command. 
D’Aiglemont was looked upon as a dashing soldier such as 
the Emperor liked, the kind of man whom his mess usually 
calls “a good fellow.” The Restoration gave him back his 
title of marquis, and did not find him ungrateful ; he followed 
the Bourbons into exile at Ghent, a piece of logical loyalty 
which falsified the horoscope drawn for him by his late father- 
in-law, who predicted that Victor would remain a colonel all 
his life. After the Hundred Days he received the appoint- 
ment of lieutenant-general, and for the second time became 
a marquis ; but it was M. d’ Aiglemont’s ambition to be a peer 
of France. He adopted, therefore, the maxims and the 
politics of the “ Conservateur,” cloaked himself in dissimu- 
lation which hid nothing (there being nothing to hide), culti- 
vated gravity of countenance and the art of asking questions 
and saying little, and was taken for a man of profound 
wisdom. Nothing drew him from his intrenchments behind 
the forms of politeness ; he laid in a provision of formulas, 
and made lavish use of his stock of the catchwords coined at 
need in Paris to give fools the small change for the ore of 
great ideas and events. Among men of the world he was 
reputed a man of taste and discernment ; and as a bigoted 
upholder of aristocratic opinions he was held up for a noble 
character. If by chance he slipped now and again into his 
old light-heartedness or levity, others were ready to discover 
an undercurrent of diplomatic intention beneath his inanity 
and silliness. “Oh! he only says exactly as much as he 
means to say,” thought these excellent people. 

So d’Aiglemont’s defects and good qualities stood him alike 
in good stead. He did nothing to forfeit a high military 
reputation gained by his dashing courage, for he had never 
been a commander-in-chief. Great thoughts surely were en- 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


41 


graven upon that manly aristocratic countenance, which im- 
posed upon every one but his own wife. And when every- 
body else believed in the Marquis d’Aiglemont’s imaginary 
talents, the marquis persuaded himself before he had done 
that he was one of the most remarkable men at court, where, 
thanks to his purely external qualifications, he was in favor 
and taken at his own valuation. 

At home, however, M. d’Aiglemont was modest. Instinc- 
tively he felt that his wife, young though she was, was his 
superior ; and out of this involuntary respect there grew an 
occult power which the marquise was obliged to wield in spite 
of all her efforts to shake off the burden. She became her 
husband’s adviser, the director of his actions and his fortunes. 
It was an unnatural position ; she felt it as something of a 
humiliation, a source of pain to be buried in the depths of 
her heart. From the first her delicately feminine instinct told 
her that it is a far better thing to obey a man of talent than to 
lead a fool ; and that a young wife compelled to act and 
think like a man is neither man nor woman, but a being who 
lays aside all the charms of her womanhood along with its 
misfortunes, yet acquires none of the privileges which our 
laws give to the stronger sex. Beneath the surface her life 
was a bitter mockery. Was she not compelled to protect her 
protector, to worship a hollow idol, a poor creature who flung 
her the love of a selfish husband as the wages of her continual 
self-sacrifice; who saw nothing in her but the woman ; and 
who either did not think it worth while, or (wrong quite as 
deep) did not think at all of troubling himself about her 
pleasures, of inquiring into the cause of her low spirits and 
dwindling health? And the marquis, like most men who 
chafe under a wife’s superiority, saved his self-love by arguing 
from Julie’s physical feebleness a corresponding lack of mental 
power, for which he was pleased to pity her; and he would 
cry out upon fate which had given him a sickly girl for a 
wife. The executioner posed, in fact, as the victim. 


42 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


All the burdens of this dreary lot fell upon the marquise, 
who still must smile upon her foolish lord, and deck a house 
of mourning with flowers, and make a parade of happiness in 
a countenance wan with secret torture. And with this sense 
of responsibility for the honor of both, with the magnificent 
immolation of self, the young marquise unconsciously acquired 
a wifely dignity, a consciousness of virtue which became her 
safeguard amid many dangers. 

Perhaps, if her heart were sounded to the very depths, this 
intimate closely hidden wretchedness, following upon her un- 
thinking girlish first-love, had aroused in her an abhorrence 
of passion; possibly she had no conception of its rapture, nor 
of forbidden but frenzied bliss for which some women will 
renounce all the laws of prudence and the principles of con- 
duct upon which society is based. She put from her like a 
dream the thought of bliss and tender harmony of love prom- 
ised by Mme. de Listomere-Landon’s mature experience, and 
waited resignedly for the end of her troubles with a hope that 
she might die young. 

Her health had declined daily since her return from Tou- 
raine ; her life seemed to be measured to her in suffering ; 
yet her ill-health was graceful, her malady seemed little more 
than languor, and might well be taken by careless eyes for a 
fine lady’s whim of invalidism. 

Her doctors had condemned her to keep to the sofa, and 
there among her flowers lay the marquise, fading as they faded. 
She was not strong enough to walk, nor to bear the open air, 
and only went out in a closed carriage. Yet with all the 
marvels of modern luxury and invention about her, she looked 
more like an indolent queen than an invalid. A few of her 
friends, half in love perhaps with her sad plight and her fragile 
look, sure of finding her at home, and speculating no doubt 
upon her future restoration to health, would come to bring 
her the news of the day, and keep her informed of the thousand 
and one small events which fill life in Paris with variety. 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


43 


Her melancholy, deep and real though it was, was still the 
melancholy of a woman rich in many ways. The Marquise 
d’Aiglemont was like some bright flower, with a dark insect 
gnawing at its root. 

Occasionally she went into society, not to please herself, 
but in obedience to the exigencies of the position which her 
husband aspired to take. In society her beautiful voice and 
the perfection of her singing could always gain the social suc- 
cess so gratifying to a young woman ; but what was social suc- 
cess to her, who drew nothing from it for her heart or her 
hopes? Her husband did not care for music. And, more- 
over, she seldom felt at her ease in salons, where her beauty 
attracted homage not wholly disinterested. Her position ex- 
cited a sort of cruel compassion, a morbid curiosity. She was 
suffering from an inflammatory complaint not infrequently 
fatal, for which our nosology as yet has found no name, a 
complaint spoken of among women in confidential whispers. 
In spite of the silence in which her life was spent, the cause 
of her ill-health was no secret. She was still but a girl in 
spite of her marriage; the slightest glance threw her into con- 
fusion. In her endeavor not to blush, she was always laugh- 
ing, always apparently in high spirits; she would never admit 
that she was not perfectly well, and anticipated questions as to 
her health by shame-stricken subterfuges. 

In 1817, however, an event took place which did much to 
alleviate Julie’s hitherto deplorable existence. A daughter 
was born to her, and she determined to nurse her child her- 
self. For two years motherhood, its all-absorbing multipli- 
city of cares and anxious joys, made life less hard for her. 
She and her husband lived necessarily apart. Her physicians 
predicted improved health, but the marquise herself put no 
faith in these auguries based on theory. Perhaps, like many 
a one for whom life has lost its sweetness, she looked forward 
to death as a happy termination of the drama. 

But with the beginning of the year 1819 life grew harder 


44 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


than ever. Even while she congratulated herself upon the 
negative happiness which she had contrived to win, she caught 
a terrifying glimpse of yawning depths below it. She had 
passed by degrees out of her husband’s life. Her fine tact 
and her prudence told her that misfortune must come, and 
that not singly, of this cooling of an affection already luke- 
warm and wholly selfish. Sure though she was of her ascen- 
dency over Victor, and certain as she felt of his unalterable 
esteem, she dreaded the influence of unbridled passions upon 
a head so empty, so full of rash self-conceit. 

Julie’s friends often found her absorbed in prolonged 
musings ; the less clairvoyant among them would jestingly ask 
her what she was thinking about, as if a young wife would 
think of nothing but frivolity, as if there were not almost al- 
ways a depth of seriousness in a mother’s thoughts. Unhap- 
piness, like great happiness, induces dreaming. Sometimes as 
Julie played with her little Helene, she would gaze darkly at 
her, giving no reply to the childish questions in which a mother 
delights, questioning the present and the future as to the destiny 
of this little one. Then some sudden recollection w’ould bring 
back the scene of the review at theTuileries and fill her eyes with 
tears. Her father’s prophetic warnings rang in her ears, and 
conscience reproached her that she had not recognized its 
wisdom. Her troubles had all come of her own wayward 
folly, and often she knew not which among so many was the 
hardest to bear. The sweet treasures of her soul were un- 
heeded, and not only so, she could never succeed in making 
her husband understand her, even in the commonest every- 
day things. Just as the power to love developed and grew 
strong and active, a legitimate channel for the affections of 
her nature was denied her, and wedded love was extinguished 
in grave physical and mental sufferings. Add to this that she 
now felt for her husband that pity closely bordering upon con- 
tempt, which withers all affection at last. Even if she had 
not learned from conversations with some of her friends, from 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


45 


examples in life, from sundry occurrences in the great world, 
that love can bring ineffable bliss, her own wounds would have 
taught her to divine the pure and deep happiness which binds 
two kindred souls each to each. 

In the picture which her memory traced of the past, Ar- 
thur’s frank face stood out daily nobler and purer ; it was but 
a flash, for upon that recollection she dared not dwell. The 
young Englishman’s shy, silent love for her was the one event 
since her marriage which had left a lingering sweetness in her 
darkened and lonely heart. It may be that all the blighted 
hopes, all the frustrated longings which gradually clouded 
Julie’s mind, gathered, by a not unnatural trick of imagina- 
tion, about this man — whose very manners, sentiments, and 
character seemed to have so much in common with her own. 
This idea still presented itself to her mind fitfully and vaguely, 
like a dream ; yet from that dream, which always ended in a 
sigh, Julie awoke to greater wretchedness, to keener con- 
sciousness of the latent anguish brooding beneath her imagi- 
nary bliss. 

Occasionally her self-pity took wilder and more daring 
flights. She determined to have happiness at any cost ; but 
still more often she lay a helpless victim of an indescribable 
numbing stupor, the words she heard had no meaning to her, 
or the thoughts which arose in her mind were so vague and 
indistinct that she could not find language to express them. 
Balked of the wishes of her heart, realities jarred harshly 
upon her girlish dreams of life, but she w r as obliged to devour 
her tears. To whom could she make complaint ? Of whom 
be understood ? She possessed, moreover, that highest degree 
of woman’s sensitive pride, the exquisite delicacy of feeling 
which silences useless complainings and declines to use an 
advantage to gain a triumph which can only humiliate both 
victor and vanquished. 

Julie tried to endow M. d'Aiglemont with her own abilities 
and virtues, flattering herself that thus she might enjoy the 


46 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


happiness lacking in her lot. All her woman’s ingenuity and 
tact was employed in making the best of the situation ; pure 
waste of pains unsuspected by him, whom she thus strength- 
ened in his despotism. There were moments when misery 
became an intoxication, expelling all ideas, all self-control ; 
but, fortunately, sincere piety always brought her back to one 
supreme hope ; she found a refuge in the belief in a future 
life, a wonderful thought which enabled her to take up her 
painful task afresh. No elation of victory followed those 
terrible inward battles and throes of anguish ; no one knew 
of those long hours of sadness ; her haggard glances met no 
response from human eyes, and during the brief moments 
snatched by chance for weeping, her bitter tears fell unheeded 
and in solitude. 

One evening in January, 1820, the marquise became aware 
of the full gravity of a crisis, gradually brought on by force 
of circumstances. When a husband and wife know each 
other thoroughly, and their relation has long been a matter 
of use and wont, when the wife has learned to interpret every 
slightest sign, when her quick insight discerns thoughts and 
facts which her husband keeps from her, a chance word, or a 
remark so carelessly let fall in the first instance, seems, upon 
subsequent reflection, like the swift breaking out of light. A 
wife not seldom suddenly awakes upon the brink of a preci- 
pice or in the depths of the abyss ; and thus it was with the 
marquise. She was feeling glad to have been left to herself 
for some days, when the real reason of her solitude flashed 
upon her. Her husband, whether fickle and tired of her or 
generous and full of pity for her, was hers no longer. 

In the moment of that discovery she forgot herself, her 
sacrifices, all that she had passed through, she remembered only 
that she was a mother. Looking forward, she thought of her 
daughter’s fortune, of the future welfare of the one creature 
through whom some gleams of happiness came to her, of her 
Helene, the only possession which bound her to life. 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


47 


Then Julie wished to live to save her child from a step- 
mother’s terrible thralldom, which might crush her darling’s 
life. Upon this new vision of threatened possibilities followed 
one of those paroxysms of thought at fever-heat which con- 
sume whole years of life. 

Henceforward husband and wife were doomed to be sepa- 
rated by a whole world of thought, and all the weight of that 
world she must bear alone. Hitherto she had felt sure that 
Victor loved her, in so far as he could be said to love ; she 
had been the slave of his pleasures which she did not 
share ; to-day the satisfaction of knowing that she pur- 
chased his contentment with her tears was hers no longer. 
She was alone in the world, nothing was left to her now but 
a choice of evils. In the calm stillness of the night her 
despondency drained her of all her strength. She rose from 
her sofa beside the dying fire and stood in the lamplight 
gazing, dry-eyed, at her child, when M. d’Aiglemont came 
in. He was in high spirits. Julie called to him to admire 
Helene as she lay asleep, but he met his wife’s enthusiasm 
with a commonplace — 

“ All children are nice at that age.” 

He closed the curtain about the cot after a careless kiss 
on the child’s forehead. Then he turned his eyes on Julie, 
took her hand and drew her to sit beside him on the sofa, 
where she had been sitting with such dark thoughts surging 
up m her mind. 

“ You are looking very handsome to-night, Mme. d’Aigle- 
mont,” he exclaimed, with the gayety intolerable to the 
marquise, who knew its emptiness so well. 

“ Where have you spent the evening?” she asked, with a 
pretense of complete indifference. 

“ At Madame de Serizy’s.” 

He had taken up a fire-screen and was looking intently at 
the gauze. He had not noticed the traces of tears on his 
wife’s face. Julie shuddered. Words could not express the 


48 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


overflowing torrent of thoughts which must be forced down 
into inner depths. 

“ Madame de Serizy is giving a concert on Monday, and 
is dying for you to go. You have not been anywhere for 
some time past, and that is enough to set her longing to see 
you at her house. She is a good-natured woman, and very 
fond of you. I should be glad if you would go ; I all but 
promised that you should ” 

“ I will go.” 

There was something so penetrating, so significant in the 
tones of Julie’s voice, in her accent, in the glance that went 
with the words, that Victor, startled out of his indifference, 
stared at his wife in astonishment. 

That was all. Julie had guessed that it was Mme. de Serizy 
who had stolen her husband’s heart from her. Her brooding 
despair benumbed her. She appeared to be deeply interested 
in the fire. Victor meanwhile still played with the fire-screen. 
He looked bored, like a man who has enjoyed himself else- 
where, and brought home the consequent lassitude. He 
yawned once or twice, then he took up a candle in one hand, 
and with the other languidly sought his wife’s neck for the 
usual embrace ; but Julie stooped and received the good-night 
kiss upon her forehead ; the formal, loveless grimace seemed 
hateful to her at that moment. 

As soon as the door closed upon Victor, his wife sank into 
a seat. Her limbs tottered beneath her, she burst into tears. 
None but those who have endured the torture of some such 
scene can fully understand the anguish that it means or divine 
the horror of the long-drawn tragedy arising out of it. 

Those simple, foolish words, the silence that followed be- 
tween the husband and wife, the marquis’ gesture and expres- 
sion, the way in which he sat before the fire, his attitude as 
he made that futile attempt to put a kiss on his wife’s throat, 
all these things made up a dark hour for Julie, and the catas- 
trophe of the drama of her sad and lonely life. In her mad- 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


49 


ness she knelt down before the sofa, burying her face in it to 
shut out everything from sight, and prayed to heaven, putting 
a new significance into the words of the evening prayer, till it 
became a cry from the depths of her own soul, which would 
have gone to her husband’s heart if he had heard it. 

The following week she spent in deep thought for her future, 
utterly overwhelmed by this new trouble. She made a study 
of it, trying to discover a way to regain her ascendency over 
the marquis, scheming how to live long enough to watch over 
her daughter’s happiness, yet to live true to her own heart. 
Then she made up her mind. She would struggle with her 
rival. She would shine once more in society. She would 
feign the love which she could no longer feel, she would cap- 
tivate her husband’s fancy ; and, when she had lured him into 
her power, she would coquet with him like a capricious mis- 
tress who takes delight in tormenting a lover. This hateful 
strategy was the only possible way out of her troubles. In 
this way she would become mistress of the situation ; she would 
prescribe her own sufferings at her good pleasure, and reduce 
them by enslaving her husband and bringing him under a 
tyrannous yoke. She felt not the slightest remorse for the 
hard life which he should lead. At a bound she reached cold, 
calculating indifference — for her daughter’s sake. She had 
gained a sudden insight into the treacherous, lying arts of 
degraded women; the wiles of coquetry, the revolting cun- 
ning which arouses such profound hatred in men at the mere 
suspicion of innate corruption in a woman. 

Julie’s feminine vanity, her interests, and a vague desire 
to inflict punishment, all wrought unconsciously with the 
mother’s love within her to force her into a path where new 
sufferings awaited her. But her nature was too noble, her 
mind too fastidious, and, above all things, too open, to be 
the accomplice of these frauds for very long. Accustomed as 
she was to self-scrutiny, at the first step in vice — for vice it 
was — the cry of conscience must inevitably drown the clamor 
4 


50 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


of the passions and of selfishness. Indeed, in a young wife 
whose heart is still pure, whose love has never been mated, 
the very sentiment of motherhood is overpowered by modesty. 
Modesty ; is not all womanhood summed up in that ? But just 
now Julie would not see any danger, anything wrong, in her 
new life. 

She went to Mme. de Serizy’s concert. Her rival had ex- 
pected to see a pallid, drooping woman. The marquise wore 
rouge, and appeared in all the splendor of a toilet which en- 
hanced her beauty. 

Mme. de Serizy was one of those women who claim to ex- 
ercise a sort of sway over fashions and society in Paris ; she 
issued her decrees, saw them received in her own circle, and 
it seemed to her that all the world obeyed them. She aspired 
to epigram, she set up for an authority in matters of taste. 
Literature, politics, men and women, all alike were submitted 
to her censorship, and the lady herself appeared to defy the 
censorship of others. Her house was in every respect a model 
of good taste. 

Julie triumphed over the countess in her own salon, filled 
as it was with beautiful women and women of fashion. Julie’s 
liveliness and sparkling wit gathered all the most distinguished 
men in the rooms about her. Her costume was faultless, to 
the despair of the women, who one and all envied her the 
fashion of her dress, and attributed the moulded outline of 
her bodice to the genius of some unknown dressmaker, for 
women would rather believe in miracles worked by the science 
of chiffons than in the grace and perfection of the form 
beneath. 

When Julie went to the piano to sing Desdemona’s song, 
the men in the rooms flocked about her to hear the celebrated 
voice so long mute, and there was a deep silence. The mar- 
quise saw the heads clustered thickly in the doorways, saw all 
eyes turned upon her, and a sharp thrill of excitement quivered 
through her. She looked for her husband, gave him a coquet- 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


51 


tish side-glance, and it pleased her to see that his vanity was 
gratified to no small degree. In the joy of triumph she sang 
the first part of “A1 piu salice.” Her audience was enrap- 
tured. Never had Malibran or Pasta sung with expression and 
intonation so perfect. But at the beginning of the second part 
she glanced over the listening groups and saw — Arthur. He 
never took his eyes from her face. A quick shudder thrilled 
through her, and her voice faltered. Up hurried Mme. de 
Serizy from her place. 

“ What is it, dear? Oh ! poor little thing ! she is in such 
weak health ; I was so afraid when I saw her begin a piece so 
far beyond her strength.” 

The song was interrupted. Julie was vexed. She had not 
courage to sing any longer, and submitted to her rival’s 
treacherous sympathy. There was a whisper among the 
women. The incident led to discussions ; they guessed that 
the struggle had begun between the marquise and Mme. de 
Serizy, and their tongues did not spare the latter. 

Julie’s strange, perturbing presentiments were suddenly 
realized. Through her preoccupation with Arthur she had 
loved to imagine that with that gentle, refined face he must 
remain faithful to his first-love. There were times when she 
felt proud that this ideal, pure, and passionate young love 
should have been hers ; the passion of the young lover whose 
thoughts are all for her to whom he dedicates every moment 
of his life, who blushes as a woman blushes, thinks as a woman 
might think, forgetting ambition, fame, and fortune in devo- 
tion to his love — she need never fear a rival. All these things 
she had fondly and idly dreamed of Arthur ; now all at once 
it seemed to her that her dream had come true. In the young 
Englishman’s half-feminine face she read the same deep 
thoughts, the same pensive melancholy, the same passive ac- 
quiescence in a painful lot, and an endurance like her own. 
She saw herself in him. Trouble and sadness are the most 
eloquent of love’s interpreters, and response is marvelously 


52 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


swift between two suffering creatures, for in them the powers 
of intuition and of assimilation of facts and ideas are well- 
nigh unerring and perfect. So with the violence of the shock 
the marquise’s eyes were opened to the whole extent of the 
future danger. She was only too glad to find a pretext for 
her nervousness in her chronic ill-health, and willingly sub- 
mitted to be overwhelmed by Mine, de Serizy’s insidious com- 
passion. 

That incident of the song caused talk and discussion which 
differed with the various groups. Some pitied Julie’s fate, 
and regretted that such a remarkable woman was lost to 
society ; others fell to wondering what the cause of her ill- 
health and seclusion could be. 

“Well, now, my dear Ronquerolles,” said the marquis, 
addressing Mme. de Serizy’s brother, “you used to envy me 
my good-fortune, and you used to blame me for my infideli- 
ties. Pshaw, you would not find much to envy in my lot if, 
like me, you had a pretty wife so fragile that for the past two 
years you might not so much as kiss her hand for fear of 
damaging her. Do not you encumber yourself with one of 
these fragile ornaments, only fit to put in a glass case, so 
brittle and so costly that you are always obliged to be careful 
of them. They tell me that you are afraid of snow or wet for 
that fine horse of yours; how often do you ride him? That 
is just my own case. It is true that my wife gives me no 
ground for jealousy, but my marriage is a purely ornamental 
business ; if you think that I am a married man, you are grossly 
mistaken. So there is some excuse for my unfaithfulness. I 
should dearly like to know what you gentlemen who laugh at 
me would do in my place. Not many men would be so con- 
siderate as I am. I am sure” (he’-e he lowered his voice) 
“that Mme. d’Aiglemont suspects nothing. And then, of 
course, I have no right to complain at all ; I am very well off. 
Only there is nothing more trying for a man who feels things 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


53 


than the sight of suffering in a poor creature to whom you are 
attached ” 

“You must have a very sensitive nature, then,” said M. de 
Ronquerolles, “ for you are not often at home.” 

Laughter followed on the friendly epigram ; but Arthur, 
who made one of the group, maintained a frigid imperturba- 
bility in his quality of an English gentleman who takes gravity 
for the very basis of his being. D’Aiglemont’s eccentric con- 
fidence, no doubt, had kindled some kind of hope in Arthur, 
for he stood patiently awaiting an opportunity of a word with 
the marquis. He had not long to wait. 

“ My lord marquis,” he said, “lam unspeakably pained to 
see the state of Madame d’Aiglemont’s health. I do not 
think that you would talk jestingly about it if you knew that 
unless she adopts a certain course of treatment she must die 
miserably. If I use this language to you, it is because I am 
in a manner justified in using it, for I am quite certain that I 
can save Madame d’Aiglemont’s life and restore her to health 
and happiness. It is odd, no doubt, that a man of my rank 
should be a physician, yet nevertheless chance determined 
that I should study medicine. I find life dull enough here,” 
he continued, affecting a cold selfishness to gain his ends; 
“ it makes no difference to me whether I spend my time and 
travel for the benefit of a suffering fellow-creature or w T aste it 
in Paris on some nonsense or other. It is very, very seldom 
that a cure is completed in these complaints, for they require 
constant care, time, and patience, and, above all things, 
money. Tra/el is needed, and a punctilious following out 
of prescriptions, by no means unpleasant, and varied daily. 
Two gentlenien ” (laying a stress on the word in its English 
sense) “ can understand each other. I give you warning that, 
if you accept my proposal, you shall be a judge of my conduct 
at every moment. I will do nothing without consulting you, 
without your superintendence, and I will answer for the 
success of my method if you will consent to follow it. Yes, 


54 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


unless you wish to be Madame d’Aiglemont’s husband no 
longer, and that before long,” he added in the marquis’ ear. 

The marquis laughed. “One thing is certain— that only 
an Englishman could make me such an extraordinary pro- 
posal,” he said. “Permit me to leave it unaccepted and 
unrejected. I will think it over; and my wife must be con- 
sulted first in any case.” 

Julie had returned to the piano. This time she sang a 
song from “ Semiramide : Son regina, son guerriera,”* and the 
whole room applauded, a stifled outburst of well-bred accla- 
mation which proved that the Faubourg Saint-Germain had 
been roused to enthusiasm by her singing. 

The evening was over. D’Aiglemont brought his wife 
home, and Julie saw with uneasy satisfaction that her first 
attempt had been at once successful. Her husband had been 
roused out of indifference by the part which she had played, 
and now he meant to honor her with such a passing fancy as 
he might bestow upon some opera nymph. It amused Julie 
that she, a virtuous married woman, should be treated thus. 
She tried to play with her power, but at the outset her kind- 
ness broke down once more, and she received the most 
terrible of all the lessons held in store for her by fate. 

Between two and three o’clock in the morning Julie sat up, 
sombre and moody, beside her sleeping husband, in the room 
dimly lighted by the flickering lamp. Deep silence' prevailed. 
Her agony of remorse had lasted near an hour ; how bitter her 
tears had been none perhaps can realize save women who have 
known such an experience as hers. Only such natures as 
Julie’s can feel her loathing for a calculated caress, the horror 
of a loveless kiss, of the heart’s apostasy, followed by dolor- 
ous prostitution. She despised herself; she cursed marriage. 
She could have longed for death ; perhaps if it had not been 
for a cry from her child, she would have sprung from the 
window and dashed herself upon the pavement. M. d’Aigle- 
* His queen, his warrior. 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


55 


mont slept on peacefully at her side ; his wife’s hot dropping 
tears did not waken him. 

But next morning Julie could be gay. She made a great 
effort to look happy, to hide, not her melancholy as hereto- 
fore, but an insuperable loathing. From that day she no 
longer regarded herself as a blameless wife. Had she not 
been false to herself? Why should she not play a double part 
in the future, and display astounding depths of cunning in 
deceiving her husband? In her there lay a hitherto undis- 
covered latent depravity, lacking only opportunity, and her 
marriage was the cause. 

Even now she had asked herself why she should struggle 
with love, when, with her heart and her whole nature in revolt, 
she gave herself to the husband whom she loved no longer. 
Perhaps, who knows ? some piece of fallacious reasoning, 
some bit of special pleading, lies at the root of all sins, of all 
crimes. How shall society exist unless every individual of 
which it is composed will make the necessary sacrifices of in- 
clination demanded by its laws? If you accept the benefits of 
civilized society, do you not by implication engage to observe 
the conditions, the conditions of its very existence? And 
yet, starving wretches, compelled to respect the laws of prop- 
erty, are not less to be pitied than women whose natural in- 
stincts and sensitiveness are turned to so many avenues of 
pain. 

A few days after that scene of which the secret lay buried 
in the midnight couch, d’Aiglemont introduced Lord Gren- 
ville. Julie gave the guest a stiffly polite reception, which did 
credit to her powers of dissimulation. Resolutely she silenced 
her heart, veiled her eyes, steadied her voice, and so kept her 
future in her own hands. Then, when by these devices, this 
innate womancraft, as it may be called, she had discovered 
the full extent of the love which she inspired, Mme. d’Aigle- 
mont welcomed the hope of a speedy cure, and no longer op- 
posed her husband, who pressed her to accept the young 


56 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


doctor’s offer. Yet she declined to trust herself with Lord 
Grenville until, after some further study of his words and 
manner, she could feel certain that he had sufficient generosity 
to endure his pain in silence. She had absolute power over 
him, and she had begun to abuse that power already. Was 
she not a woman ? 

Montcontour is an old manor-house built upon the sandy 
cliffs above the Loire, not far from the bridge where Julie’s 
journey was interrupted in 1814. It is a picturesque, white 
hall, with turrets covered with fine stone carving like Mechlin 
lace ; a mansion such as you often see in Touraine, spick and 
span, ivy-clad, standing among its groves of mulberry-trees 
and vineyards, with its hollow walks, its stone balustrades, 
and cellars mined in the rock escarpments mirrored in the 
Loire. The roofs of Montcontour gleam in the sun ; the 
whole land glows in the burning heat. Traces of the romantic 
charm of Spain and the south hover about the enchanting 
spot. The breeze brings the scent of bell-flowers and golden- 
broom, the air is soft ; all about you lies a sunny land, a land 
which casts its dreamy spell over your soul, a land of languor 
and of soft desire, a fair, sweet-scented country, where pain is 
lulled to sleep and passion wakes. No heart is cold for long 
beneath its clear sky, beside its sparkling waters. One ambi- 
tion dies after another, and you sink into a serene content and 
repose, as the sun sinks at the end of the day swathed about 
with purple and azure. 

One warm August evening in 1821 two people were climb- 
ing the paths cut in the crags above the hall, doubtless for the 
sake of the view from the heights above. The two were Julie 
and Lord Grenville, but this Julie seemed to be a new creature. 
The unmistakable color of health glowed in her face. Over- 
flowing vitality had brought a light into her eyes, which 
sparkled through a moist film with that liquid brightness 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


57 


which gives such irresistible charm to the eyes of children. 
She was radiant with smiles ; she felt the joy of living and all 
the possibilities of life. From the very way in which she 
lifted her little feet, it was easy to see that no suffering tram- 
meled her lightest movements; there was no heaviness nor 
languor in her eyes, her voice, as heretofore. Under the 
white silk sunshade which screened her from the hot sunlight, 
she looked like some young bride beneath her veil, or a maiden 
waiting to yield to the magical enchantments of Love. 

Arthur led her with a lover’s care, helping her up the path- 
way as if she had been a child, finding the smoothest ways, 
avoiding the stones for her, bidding her see glimpses of dis- 
tance, or some flower beside the path, always with the unfail- 
ing goodness, the same delicate design in all that he did, the 
intuitive sense of this woman’s well-being seemed to be innate 
in him, and as much, nay, perhaps more, a part of his being 
as the pulse of his own life. 

The patient and her doctor went step for step. There was 
nothing strange for them in a sympathy which seemed to 
have existed since the day when first they walked together. 
One will swayed them both ; they stopped as their senses 
received the same impression ; every word and every glance 
told of the same thought in either mind. They had climbed 
up through the vineyards, and now they turned to sit on one 
of the long white stones, quarried out of the caves in the 
hillside ; but Julie stood awhile gazing out over the landscape. 

“What a beautiful country ! ” she cried. “ Let us put up 
a tent and live here. Victor, Victor, do come up here i ” 

M. d’Aiglemont answered by a halloo from below. He 
did not, however, hurry himself, merely giving his wife a 
glance from time to time when the windings of the path gave 
him a glimpse of her. Julie breathed the air with delight. 
She looked up at Arthur, giving him one of those subtle 
glances in which a clever woman can put the whole of her 
thought. 


C 


58 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY, \ 


“ Ah, I should like to live here always,” she said. “Would 
it be possible to tire of this beautiful valley? What is the 
picturesque river called, do you know?” 

“ That is the Cise.” 

“The Cise,” she repeated. “And all this country below, 
before us ? ” 

“Those are the low hills above the Cher.”* 

“And away to the right? Ah, that is Tours. Only see 
how fine the cathedral towers look in the distance.” 

She was silent, and let fall the hand which she had 
stretched out toward the view upon Arthur’s. Both admired 
the wide landscape made up of so much blended beauty. 
Neither of them spoke. The murmuring voice of the river, 
the pure air, and the cloudless heaven were all in tune with 
their thronging thoughts and their youth and the love in their 
hearts. 

“ Oh ! my God, how I love this country ! ” Julie continued, 
with growing and ingenuous enthusiasm. “You lived here 
for a long while, did you not ? ” she added after a pause. 

A thrill ran through Lord Grenville at her words. 

“It was down there,” he said, in a melancholy voice, in- 
dicating as he spoke a cluster of walnut-trees by the roadside, 
“ that I, a prisoner, saw you for the first time.” 

“Yes, but even at that time I felt very sad. This country 

looked wild to me then, but now ” She broke off, and 

Lord Grenville did not dare to look at her. 

“All this pleasure I owe to you,” Julie began at last, after 
a long silence. “ Only the living can feel the joy of life, 
and until now have I not been dead to it all ? You have 
given me more than health, you have made me feel all its 
worth ” 

Women have an inimitable talent for giving utterance to 
strong feeling in colorless words; a woman’s eloquence lies 
in tone and gesture, manner and glance. Lord Grenville hid 
* A tributary of the Loire. 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


59 


his face in his hands, for the tears filled his eyes. This was 
Julie's first word of thanks since they left Paris a year ago. 

Fot a whole year he had watched over the marquise, putting 
his whole self into the task. D’Aiglemont seconding him, he 
had taken her first to Aix, then to La Rochelle, to be near 
the sea. From moment to moment he had watched the 
changes worked in Julie’s shattered constitution by his wise 
and simple prescriptions. He had cultivated her health as an 
enthusiastic gardener might cultivate a rare flower. Yet, to 
all appearance, the marquise had quietly accepted Arthur’s 
skill and care with the egoism of a spoiled Parisienne, or like 
a courtesan who has no idea of the cost of things, nor of the 
worth of a man, and judges of both by their comparative 
usefulness to her. 

The influence of places upon us is a fact worth remarking. 
If melancholy comes over us by the margin of a great water, 
another indelible law of our nature so orders it that the moun- 
tains exercise a purifying influence upon our feelings, and 
among the hills passion gains in depth by all that it apparently 
loses in vivacity. Perhaps it was the sight of the wide country 
by the Loire, the height of the fair sloping hillside on which 
the lovers sat, that induced the calm bliss of the moment when 
the whole extent of the passion that lies beneath a few insig- 
nificant-sounding words is divined for the first time with a 
delicious sense of happiness. 

Julie had scarcely spoken the words which had moved Lord 
Grenville so deeply, when a caressing breeze ruffled the tree- 
tops and filled the air with coolness from the river ; a few 
clouds crossed the sky, and the soft cloud-shadows brought 
out all the beauty "of the fair land below. 

Julie turned away her head, lest Arthur should see the tears 
which she succeeded in repressing ; his emotion had spread at 
once to her. She dried her eyes, but she dared not raise 
them lest he should read the excess of joy in a glance. Her 
woman’s instinct told her that during this hour of danger she 


60 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


must hide her love in the depths of her heart. Yet silence 
might prove equally dangerous, and Julie saw that Lord 
Grenville was unable to utter a word. She went on, there- 
fore, in a gentle voice — 

“You are touched by what I have said. Perhaps such a 
quick outburst of feeling is the way in which a gracious and 
kind nature like yours reverses a mistaken judgment. You 
must have thought me ungrateful when I was cold and re- 
served, or cynical and hard, all through the journey which, 
fortunately, is very near its end. I should not have been 
worthy of your care if I had been unable to appreciate it. I 
have forgotten nothing. Alas ! I shall forget nothing, not 
the anxious way in which you watched over me as a mother 
watches over her child, nor, and above all else, the noble 
confidence of our life as brother and sister, the delicacy of 
your conduct — winning charms, against which we women are 
defenseless. My lord, it is out of my power to make you 
a return ” 

At those words Julie hastily moved farther away, and Lord 
Grenville made no attempt to detain her. She went to a rock 
not far away, and there sat motionless. What either felt re- 
mained a secret known to each alone ; doubtless they wept in 
silence. The singing of the birds about them, so blithe, so 
overflowing with tenderness at sunset time, could only 
increase the storm of passion which had driven them apart. 
Nature took up their story for them, and found a language for 
the love of which they did not dare to speak. 

“ And now, my lord,” said Julie, and she came and stood 
before Arthur with a great dignity, which allowed her to take 
his hand in hers. “I am going to ask you to hallow and 
purify the life which you have given back to me. Here, we 
will part. I know,” she added, as she saw how white his face 
grew, “ I know that I am repaying you for your devotion by 
requiring of you a sacrifice even greater than any which you 
have hitherto made for me, sacrifices so great that they should 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


61 


receive some better recompense than this. But it must be. 
You must not stay in France. By laying this command upon 
you, do I not give you rights which shall be held sacred?” 
she added, holding his hand against her beating heart. 

“Yes,” said Arthur, and he arose. 

He looked in the direction of d’Aiglemont, who appeared 
on the opposite side of one of the hollow walks with the 
child in his arms. He had scrambled up on the balustrade by 
the manor-house that little Helene might jump down. 

“Julie, I will say not a word of my love; we understand 
each other too well. Deeply and carefully though I have 
hidden the pleasures of my heart, you have shared them all. I 
feel it, I know it, I see it. And now, at this moment, as I 
receive this delicious proof of the constant sympathy of our 
hearts, I must go. Cunning schemes for getting rid of him 
have crossed my mind too often ; the temptation might be 
irresistible if I stayed with you.” 

“ I had the same thought,” she said, a look of pained sur- 
prise in her troubled face. 

Yet in her tone and involuntary shudder there was such 
virtue, such certainty of herself, won in many a hard-fought 
battle with a love that spoke in Julie’s tones and involuntary 
gestures, that Lord Grenville stood thrilled with admiration 
of her. The mere shadow of a crime had been dispelled 
from that clear conscience. The religious sentiment en- 
throned on the fair forehead could not but drive away the 
evil thoughts that arise unbidden, engendered by our imperfect 
nature, thoughts which make us aware of the grandeur and 
the perils of human destiny. 

“And then,” she said, “I should have drawn down your scorn 

upon me, and I should have been saved,” she added, 

and her eyes fell. “ To be lowered in your eyes, what is 
that but death ? ” 

For a moment the two heroic lovers were silent, choking 
down their sorrow. Good or ill, it seemed that their thoughts 


62 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


were loyally one, and the joys in the depths of their hearts 
were no more experiences apart than the pain which they 
strove most anxiously to hide. 

“I have no right to complain,” she said after a while, 
“my misery is of my own making,” and she raised her tear- 
filled eyes to the sky. 

“ Perhaps you don’t remember it, but that is the place 
where we met each other for the first time,” shouted the 
general from below, and he waved his hand toward the dis- 
tance. “There, down yonder, near those poplars ! ” 

The Englishman nodded abruptly by way of answer. 

“ So I was bound to die young and to know no happiness,” 
Julie continued. “Yes, do not think that I live. Sorrow is 
just as fatal as the dreadful disease which you have cured. I 
do not think that I am to blame. No. My love is stronger 
than I am, and eternal ; but all unconsciously it grew in me ; 
and I will not be guilty through my love. Nevertheless, 
though I shall be faithful to my conscience as a wife, to my 
duties as a mother, I will be no less faithful to the instincts 
of my heart. Hear me,” she cried in an unsteady voice, 
“ henceforth I belong to him no longer.” 

By a gesture, dreadful to see in its undisguised loathing, 
she indicated her husband. 

“ The social code demands that I should make his existence 
happy,” she continued. “I will obey, I will be his servant, 
my devotion to him shall be boundless ; but from to-day I am 
a widow. I will neither be a prostitute in my own eyes nor 
in those of the world. If I do not belong to Monsieur 
d’Aiglemont, I will never belong to another. You shall have 
nothing, nothing save this which you have wrung from me. 
This is the doom which I have passed upon myself,” she said, 
looking proudly at him. “ And now, know this — if you give 
way toa singlecriminal thought, Monsieurd’Aiglemont’s widow 
will enter a convent in Spain or Italy. By an evil chance we 
have spoken of our love ; perhaps that confession was bound to 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


63 


come ; but our hearts must never again vibrate like this. To- 
morrow you will receive a letter from England, and we shall 
part and never see each other again.” 

The effort had exhausted all Julie’s strength. She felt her 
knees trembling, and a feeling of deathly cold came over her. 
Obeying a woman’s instinct, she sat down, lest she should 
sink into Arthur’s arms. 

“Julie!” cried Lord Grenville. 

The sharp cry rang through the air like a crack of thunder. 
Till then he could not speak ; now, all the words which the 
dumb lover could not utter gathered themselves in that heart- 
rending appeal. 

“Well, what is wrong with her?” asked the general, who 
had hurried up at that cry, and now suddenly confronted the 
two. 

“Nothing serious,” said Julie, with that wonderful self- 
possession which a woman’s quick-wittedness usually brings to 
her aid when it is most called for. “The chill, damp air 
under the walnut-tree made me feel quite faint just now, and 
that must have alarmed this doctor of mine. Does he not 
look on me as a very nearly finished work of art? He was 
startled, I suppose, by the idea of seeing it destroyed.” With 
ostentatious coolness she took Lord Grenville’s arm, smiled 
at her husband, took a last look at the landscape, and went 
down the pathway, drawing her traveling companion along 
with her. 

“This certainly is thd grandest view that we have seen,” 
she said; “I shall never forget it. Just look, Victor, what 
distance, what an expanse of country, and what variety in it ! 
I have fallen in love with this landscape.” 

Her laughter was almost hysterical, but to her husband it 
sounded natural. She sprang gayly down into the hollow 
pathway and vanished. 

“What?” she cried, when they had left M. d’Aiglemont 
far behind. “ So soon? Is it so soon? Another moment, 


64 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


and we can neither of us be ourselves ; we shall never be our- 
selves again, our life is over, in short ” 

“Let us go slowly,” said Lord Grenville, “the carriages 
are still some way off, and if we may put words into our 
glances, our hearts may live a little longer.” 

They went along the footpath by the river in the late even- 
ing light, almost in silence ; such vague words as they uttered, 
low as the murmur of the Loire, stirred their souls to the 
depths. Just as the sun sank, a last red gleam from the sky 
fell over them ; it was like a mournful symbol of their ill- 
starred love. 

The general, much put out because the carriage was not at 
the spot where they left it, followed and outstripped the pair 
without interrupting their conversation. Lord Grenville’s 
high-minded and delicate behavior throughout the journey 
had completely dispelled the marquis’ suspicions. For some 
time past he had left his wife in freedom, reposing confidence 
in the noble amateur’s Punic faith. Arthur and Julie walked 
on together in the close and painful communion of two hearts 
laid waste. 

So short a while ago as they climbed the cliffs at Montcon- 
tour, there had been a vague hope in either mind, an uneasy 
joy for which they dared not account to themselves ; but now 
as they came along the pathway by the river, they pulled 
down the frail structure of imaginings, the child’s card-castle, 
on which neither of them had dared to breathe. That hope 
was over. 

That very evening Lord Grenville left them. His last look 
at Julie made it miserably plain that since the moment when 
sympathy revealed the full extent of a tyrannous passion, he 
did well to mistrust himself. 

The next morning M. d’Aiglemont and his wife took their 
places in their carriage without their traveling companion, 
and were whirled swiftly along the road to Blois. The mar- 
quise was constantly put in mind of the journey made in 1814, 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


65 


when as yet she knew nothing of love, and had been almost 
ready to curse it for its persistency. Countless forgotten im- 
pressions were revived. The heart has its own memory. A 
woman who cannot recollect the most important great events 
will recollect through a lifetime things which appealed to her 
feelings; and Julie d’Aiglemont found all the most trifling 
details of that journey laid up in her mind. It was pleasant 
to her to recall its little incidents as they occurred to her one 
by one ; there were points in the road when she could even 
remember the thoughts that passed through her mind when 
she saw them first. 

Victor had fallen violently in love with his wife since she 
had recovered the freshness of her youth and all her beauty, 
and now he pressed close to her side like a lover. Once he 
tried to put his arm round her, but she gently disengaged 
herself, finding some excuse or other for evading the harmless 
caress. In a little while she shrank from the close contact 
with Victor, the sensation of warmth communicated by their 
position. She tried to take the unoccupied place opposite, 
but Victor gallantly resigned the back seat to her. For this 
attention she thanked him with a sigh, whereupon he forgot 
himself, and the Don Juan of the garrison construed his wife’s 
melancholy to his own advantage, so that at the end of the 
day she was compelled to speak with a firmness which im- 
pressed him. 

“You have all but killed me, dear, once already, as you 
know,” said she. “ If I were still an inexperienced girl, I 
might begin to sacrifice myself afresh ; but I am a mother, 

I have a daughter to bring up, and I owe as much to her as 
to you. Let us resign ourselves to a misfortune which affects 
us both alike. You are the less to be pitied. Have you not, 
as it is, found consolations which duty and the honor of both, 
and (stronger still) which Nature forbids to me? Stay,” she 
added, “you carelessly left three letters from Madame de 
Serizy in a drawer ; here they are. My- silence about this 
5 


66 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


matter should make it plain to you that in me you have a wife 
who has plenty of indulgence and does not exact from you 
the sacrifices prescribed by the law. But I have thought 
enough to see that the roles of husband and wife are quite 
different, and that the wife alone is predestined to misfortune. 
My virtue is based upon firmly fixed and definite principles. 
I shall live blamelessly, but let me live." 

The marquis was taken aback by a logic which women 
grasp with the clear insight of love, and overawed by a cer- 
tain dignity natural to them at such crises. Julie’s instinctive 
repugnance for all that jarred upon her love and the instincts 
of her heart is one of the fairest qualities of woman, and 
springs perhaps from a natural virtue which neither laws nor 
civilization can silence. And who shall dare to blame women? 
If a woman can silence the exclusive sentiment which bids 
her “ forsake all other ” for the man whom she loves, what is 
she but a priest who has lost his faith ? If a rigid mind here 
and there condemns Julie for a sort of compromise between 
love and wifely duty, impassioned souls will lay it to her 
charge as a crime. To be thus blamed by both sides shows 
one ot two things very clearly — that misery necessarily follows 
in the train of broken laws, or else that there are deplorable 
flaws in the institutions upon which society in Europe is based. 

Two years went by. M. and Mme. d’Aiglemont went their 
separate ways, leading their life in the world, meeting each 
other more frequently abroad than at home, a refinement 
upon divorce, in which many a marriage in the great world 
is apt to end. 

One evening, strange to say, found husband and wife in 
their own drawing-room. Mme. d’Aiglemont had been dining 
at home with a friend, and the general, who almost invariably 
dined in town, had not gone out for once. 

“ There is a pleasant time in store for you, Madame la Mar * 
quise ,” said M. d’Aiglemont, setting his coffee cup down upon 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY 


67 


the table. He looked at the guest, Mme. de Wimphen, and 
half-pettishly, half-mischievously added, “I am starting off 
for several days’ sport with the master of the hounds. For a 
whole week, at any rate, you will be a widow in good 
earnest; just what you wish for, I suppose. Guillaume,” he 
said to the servant who entered, “tell them to put the 
horses in.” 

Mme. de Wimphen was the friend to whom Julie had 
begun the letter upon her marriage. The glances exchanged 
by the two women said plainly that in her Julie had found an 
intimate friend, an indulgent and invaluable confidant. 
Mme. de Wimphen’s marriage had been a very happy one. 
Perhaps it was her own happiness which secured her devotion 
to Julie’s unhappy life, for, under such circumstances, dissimi- 
larity of destiny is nearly always a strong bond of union. 

“ Is the hunting season not over yet?” asked Julie, with 
an indifferent glance at her husband. 

“The master of the hounds comes when and where he 
pleases, madame. We are going boar-hunting in the Royal 
Forest.” 

“ Take care that no accident happens to you.” 

“Accidents are usually unforeseen,” he said, smiling. 

“The carriage is ready, my lord marquis,” said the servant. 

“Madame, if I should fall a victim to the boar ” he 

continued, with a suppliant air. 

“What does this mean?” inquired Mme. de Wimphen. 

“Come, come,” said Mme. d’Aiglemont, turning to her 
husband; smiling at her friend as if to say, “You will soon 
see.” 

Julie held up her head ; but as her husband came close to 
her, she swerved at the last, so that his kiss fell not on her 
throat, but on the broad frill about it. 

“You will be my witness before heaven now that I need a 
firman to obtain this little grace of her,” said the marquis, 
addressing Mme. de Wimphen. “This is how this wife of 


68 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


mine understands love. She has brought me to this pass, by 

what trickery I am at a loss to know A pleasant time to 

you ! ” and he went. 

“But your poor husband is really very good-natured,’ * 
cried Louisa de Wimphen, when the two women were alone 
together. He loves you.” 

“ Oh ! not another syllable after that last word. The name 
I bear makes me shudder ” 

“ Yes, but Victor obeys you implicitly,” said Louisa. 

“ His obedience is founded in part upon the great esteem 
which I have inspired in him. As far as outward things go, I 
am a model wife. I make his house pleasant to him ; I shut 
my eyes to his intrigues ; I touch not a penny of his fortune. 
He is free to squander the interest exactly as he pleases ; I 
only stipulate that he shall not touch the principal. At this 
price I have peace. He neither explains nor attempts to ex- 
plain my life. But though my husband is guided by me, that 
does not say that I have nothing to fear from his character. 
I am a bear-leader who daily trembles lest the muzzle should 
give way at last. If Victor once took it into his head that I 
had forfeited my right to his esteem, what would happen next 
I dare not think ; for he is violent, full of personal pride, and 
vain above all things. While his wits are not keen enough to 
enable him to behave discreetly at a delicate crisis when his 
lowest passions are involved, his character is weak, and he 
would very likely kill me provisionally even if he died of re- 
morse next day. But there is no fear of that fatal good-for- 
tune.” 

A brief pause followed. Both women were thinking of the 
real cause of this state of affairs. Julie gave Louisa a glance 
which revealed her thoughts. 

“I have been cruelly obeyed,” she cried. “Yet I never 
forbade him to write me. Oh ! he, he has forgotten me, and 
he is right. If his life had been spoiled, it would have been 
too tragical ; one life is enough, is it not ? Would you be- 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


69 


lieve it, dear ; I read English newspapers simply to see his 
name in print. But he has not yet taken his seat in the 
House of Lords.” 

“ So you know English?” 

“ Did I not tell you ? Yes, I learned.” 

“Poor little one ! ” cried Louisa, grasping Julie’s hand in 
hers. “ How can you still live ? ” 

“ That is a secret,” said the marquise, with an involuntary 
gesture almost childlike in its simplicity. “ Listen, I take 
laudanum. That duchess in London suggested the idea ; you 
know the story, Maturin made use of it in one of his novels. 
My drops are very weak, but I sleep ; I am only awake for 
seven hours in the day, and those hours I spend with my 
child.” 

Louisa gazed into the fire. The full extent of her friend’s 
misery was opening out before her for the first time and she 
dared not look into her face. 

“Keep my secret, Louisa,” said Julie, after a moment’s 
silence. 

Just as she spoke the footman brought in a letter for the 
marquise. 

“ Ah ! ” she cried, and her face grew white. 

“ I need not ask from whom it comes,” said Mme. de 
Wimphen, but the marquise was reading the letter, and 
heeded nothing else. 

Mme. de Wimphen, watching her friend, saw strong feel- 
ing wrought to the highest pitch, ecstasy of the most danger- 
ous kind painted on Julie’s face in swift-changing white and 
red. At length Julie flung the sheet into the fire. 

“ It burns like fire,” she said. “Oh ! my heart beats till 
I cannot breathe.” 

She rose to her feet and walked up and down. Her eyes 
were blazing. 

“ He did not leave Paris ! ” she cried. 

Mme. de Wimphen did not dare to interrupt the words 


70 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY, 


that followed, jerked-out sentences, measured by dreadful 
pauses in between. After every break the deep notes of her 
voice sank lower and lower. There was something awful 
about the last words. 

“ He has seen me, constantly, and I have not known it. — 
A look, taken by stealth, every day, helps him to live. — 
Louisa, you do not know ! — He is dying. — He wants to say 
good-by to me. He knows that my husband has gone away 
for several days. He will be here in a moment. Oh ! I 
shall die: I am lost. — Listen, Louisa, stay with me! Two 

women and he will not dare Oh ! stay with me ! — I am 

afraid ! ” 

“ But my husband knows that I have been dining with you ; 
he is sure to come for me,” said Mme. de Wimphen. 

“Well, then, before you go I will send him away. I will 
play the executioner for us both. Oh me ! he will think that 

I do not love him any more And that letter of his ! 

Dear, I can see those words in letters of fire.” 

A carriage rolled in under the archway. 

“ Ah ! ” cried the marquise, with something like joy in her 
voice, “he is coming openly. He makes no mystery of it.” 

“Lord Grenville,” announced the servant. 

The marquise stood up rigid and motionless ; but at the 
sight of Arthur’s white face, so thin and haggard, how was 
it possible to keep up the show of severity ? Lord Grenville 
saw that Julie was not alone, but he controlled his fierce an- 
noyance, and looked cool and unperturbed. Yet for the two 
women who knew his secret, his face, his tones, the look in 
his eyes had something of the power attributed to the torpedo. 
Their faculties were benumbed by the sharp shock of contact 
with his horrible pain. The sound of his voice set Julie’s 
heart beating so cruelly that she could not trust herself to 
speak ; she was afraid that he would see the full extent of his 
power over her. Lord Grenville did not dare to look at 
Julie, and Mme. de Wimphen was left to sustain a conversa- 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


71 


tion to which no one listened. Julie glanced at her friend 
with touching gratefulness in her eyes to thank her for coming 
to her aid. 

By this time the lovers had quelled emotion into silence, 
and could preserve the limits laid down by duty and conven- 
tion. But M. de Wimphen was announced, and as he came 
in the two friends exchanged glances. Both felt the difficulties 
of this fresh complication. It was impossible to enter into 
explanations with M. de Wimphen, and Louisa could not 
think of any sufficient pretext for asking to be left. 

Julie went to her, ostensibly to wrap her up in her shawl. 
“I will be brave, ” she said, in a low voice. “He came 
here in face of all the world, so what I have to fear? Yet, 
but for you, in that first moment, when I saw how changed he 
looked, I should have fallen at his feet.” 

“ Well, Arthur, you have broken your promise to me,” she 
said, in a faltering voice, when she returned. Lord Grenville 
did not venture to take the seat upon the sofa by her side. 

“ I could not resist the pleasure of hearing your voice, of 
being near you. The thought of it came to be a sort of mad- 
ness, a delirious frenzy. I am no longer master of myself. 
I have taken myself to task ; it is no use, I am too weak, I 
ought to die. But to die without seeing you, without having 
heard the rustle of your dress, or felt your tears. What a 
death ! ” 

He moved farther away from her ; but in his hasty uprising 
a pistol fell out of his pocket. The marquise looked down 
blankly at the weapon ; all passion, all expression had died 
out of his eyes. Lord Grenville stooped for the thing, raging 
inwardly over an accident which seemed like a piece of love- 
sick strategy. 

“ Arthur / ” 

“Madame,” he said, looking down, “I came here in utter 
desperation; I meant ” he broke off. 

“ You meant to die by your own hand here in my house ! ” 


72 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


“ Not alone,” he said in a low voice. 

“ Not alone! My husband, perhaps ? 99 

“ No, no,” he cried in a choking voice. “Reassure your- 
self,” he continued, “ I have quite given up my deadly pur- 
pose. As soon as I came in, as soon as I saw you, I felt that 
I was strong enough to suffer in silence, and to die alone.” 

Julie sprang up, and flung herself into his arms. Through 
her sobbing he caught a few passionate words, “ To know 
happiness, and then to die. Yes, let it be so.” 

All Julie’s story was summed up in that cry from the depths ; 
it was the summons of nature and of love at which women with- 
out a religion surrender. With the fierce energy of unhoped- 
for joy, Arthur caught her up and carried her to the sofa ; 
but in a moment she tore herself from her lover’s arms, 
looked at him with a fixed despairing gaze, took his hand, 
snatched up a candle, and drew him into her room. When 
they stood by the cot where Helene lay sleeping, she put the 
curtains softly aside, shading the candle with her hand, lest 
the light should dazzle the half-closed eyes beneath the trans- 
parent lids. Helene lay smiling in her sleep, with her arms 
outstretched on the coverlet. Julie glanced from her child 
to Arthur’s face. That look told him all. 

“ We may leave a husband, even though he loves us : a man 
is strong ; he has consolations. We may defy the world and 
its laws. But a motherless child ! ” — all these thoughts, and 
a thousand others more moving still, found language in that 
glance. 

“ We can take her with us,” muttered he ; “I will love her 
dearly.” 

“Mamma! ” cried little Helene, now awake. Julie burst 
into tears. Lord Grenville sat down and folded his arms in 
gloomy silence. 

“ Mamma ! ” At the sweet childish name, so many nobler 
feelings, so many irresistible yearnings awoke, that for a mo- 
ment love was effaced by the all-powerful instinct of mother- 






ft 







She hut the curtains softly aside. 


>• 










N 























A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


73 


hood ; the mother triumphed over the woman in Julie, and 
Lord Grenville could not hold out, he was defeated by Julie’s 
tears. 

Just at that moment a door was flung noisily open. “ Mad- 
ame d’Aiglemont, are you hereabout?” called a voice which 
rang like a crack of thunder through the hearts of the two 
lovers. The marquis had come home. 

Before Julie could recover her presence of mind, her hus- 
band was on the way to the door of her room which opened 
into his. Luckily, at a sign, Lord Grenville escaped into 
the dressing-closet, and she hastily shut the door upon him. 

“Well, my lady, here am I,” said Victor, “the hunting 
party did not come off. I am just going to bed.” 

“Good-night, so am I. So go and leave me to undress.” 

“You are very cross to-night, Madame la Marquise.” 

The general returned to his room, Julie went with him to 
the door and shut it. Then she sprang to the dressing-closet 
to release Arthur. All her presence of mind returned ; she 
bethought herself that it was quite natural that her sometime 
doctor should pay her a visit ; she might have left him in the 
drawing-room while she put her little girl to bed. She was 
about to tell him, under her breath, to go back to the drawing- 
room, and had opened the door. Then she shrieked aloud. 
Lord Grenville’s fingers had been caught and crushed in the 
door. 

“Well, what is it?” demanded her husband. 

“ Oh ! nothing, nothing, I have just pricked my finger with 
a pin.” 

The general’s door opened at once. Julie imagined that 
the irruption was due to a sudden concern for her, and cursed 
a solicitude in which love had no part. She had barely time 
to close the dressing-closet, and Lord Grenville had not ex- 
tricated his hand. The general did, in fact, appear, but his 
wife had mistaken his motives; his apprehensions were en- 
tirely on his own account. 


74 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


“ Can you lend me a bandana handkerchief? That stupid 
fool Charles leaves me without a single one. In the early 
days you used to bother me with looking after me so carefully. 
Ah, well, the honeymoon did not last very long for me, nor 
yet for my cravats. Nowadays I am given over to the secular 
arm, in the shape of servants who do not care one jack-straw 
for what I say.” 

“ There ! There is a bandana for you. Did you go into 
the drawing-room ? ” 

“No.” 

“ Oh ! you might perhaps have been in time to see Lord 
Grenville.” 

“ Is he in Paris?” 

“ It seems so.” 

“ Oh ! I will go at once. The good doctor.” 

“ But he will have gone by now ! ” exclaimed Julie. 

The marquis, standing in the middle of the room, was 
tying the handkerchief over his head. He looked compla- 
cently at himself in the glass. 

“What has become of the servants is more than I know,” 
he said. “ I rang the bell three times for Charles, and he 
did not answer it. And your maid is not here either. Ring 
for her. I should like another blanket on my bed to-night.” 

“ Pauline is out,” the marquise said drily. 

“ What, at midnight ? ” exclaimed the general. 

“ I gave her leave to go to the opera.” 

“That is funny!” returned the husband, continuing to 
undress. “ I thought I saw her coming upstairs.” 

“ She has come in then, of course,” said Julie, with as- 
sumed impatience, and to allay any possible suspicion on her 
husband’s part she pretended to ring the bell. 

The whole history of that night has never been known, but 
no doubt it was as simple and as tragically commonplace as 
the domestic incidents that preceded it. 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY, 


75 


Next day the Marquise d’Aiglemont took to her bed, nor 
did she leave it for some days. 

“ What can have happened in your family so extraordinary 
that every one is talking about your wife?” asked M. de Ron- 
querolles of M. d’Aiglemont a short time after that night of 
catastrophes. 

“Take my advice and remain a bachelor,” said d’Aigle- 
mont. “The curtains of Helene’s cot caught fire and gave 
my wife such a shock that it will be a twelvemonth before she 
gets over it ; so the doctor says. You marry a pretty wife, 
and her looks fall off ; you marry a girl in blooming health, 
and she turns into an invalid. You think she has a passionate 
temperament, and find her cold, or else under her apparent 
coldness there lurks a nature so passionate that she is the death 
of you, or she dishonors your name. Sometimes the meekest 
of them will turn out crotchety, though the crotchety ones 
never grow any sweeter. Sometimes the mere child, so simple 
and silly at first, will develop an iron will to thwart you and 
the ingenuity of a fiend. I am tired of marriage.” 

“ Or of your wife ? ” 

“ That would be difficult. By-the-by, do you feel inclined 
to go to Saint-Thomas d’Aquin with me to attend Lord Gren- 
ville’s funeral?” 

“ A singular way of spending time. Is it really known how 
he came by his death?” added Ronquerolles. 

“ His man says that he spent a whole night sitting on some- 
body’s window-sill to save some woman’s character, and it has 
been infernally cold lately.” 

“ Such devotion would be highly creditable to one of us old 
stagers ; but Lord Grenville was a youngster and — an English- 
man. Englishmen never can do anything like anybody else.” 

“ Pooh ! ” returned d’Aiglemont, “ these heroic exploits all 
depend upon the woman in the case, and it certainly was not 
for one that I know that poor Arthur came by his death.” 


n. 


A HIDDEN GRIEF. 

Between the Seine and the little river Loing lies a wide flat 
country, skirted on the one side by the Forest of Fontaine- 
bleau, and marked out as to its southern limits by the towns 
of Moret, Montereau, and Nemours. It is a dreary country ; 
little knolls of hills appear only at rare intervals, and a cop- 
pice here and there among the fields affords cover for game ; 
and beyond, upon every side, stretches the endless gray or 
yellowish horizon peculiar to Beauce, Sologne, and Berri. 

In the very centre of the plain, at equal distances from 
Moret and Montereau, the traveler passes the old castle of 
Saint-Lange, standing amid surroundings which lack neither 
dignity nor stateliness. There are magnificent avenues of elm- 
trees, great gardens encircled by the moat, and a circumfer- 
ence of walls about a huge memorial pile which represents the 
profits of the maltdte (illegal taxation), the gains of farmers- 
general, legalized malversation, or the vast fortunes of great 
houses now brought low beneath the hammer of the Civil 
Code. 

Should any artist or dreamer of dreams chance to stray along 
the roads full of deep ruts, or over the heavy land which se- 
cures the place against intrusion, he will wonder how it hap- 
pened that this romantic old place was set down in a savanna 
of grain-land, a desert of chalk, and sand, and mail, where 
gayety dies away and melancholy is a natural product of the 
soil. The voiceless solitude, the monotonous horizon-line 
which weigh upon the spirits, are negative beauties, which 
only suit with sorrow that refuses to be comforted. 

Hither, at the close of the year 1820, came a woman, still 
( 76 ) 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


77 


young, well known in Paris for her charm, her fair face, and 
her wit ; and to the immense astonishment of the little village 
a mile away, this woman of high rank and corresponding for- 
tune took up her abode at Saint-Lange. 

From time immemorial, farmers and laborers had seen no 
gentry at the mansion. The estate, considerable though it 
was, had been left in charge of a land-steward and the house 
to the old servants. Wherefore the appearance of the lady of 
the manor caused a kind of sensation in the district. 

A group had gathered in the yard of the wretched little wine- 
shop at the end of the village (where the road forks to Nemours 
and Moret) to see the carriage pass. It went by slowly, for 
the marquise had come from Paris with her own horses, and 
those on the lookout had ample opportunity of observing a 
waiting-maid, who sat with her back to the horses holding a 
little girl, with a somewhat dreamy look, upon her knee. 
The child’s mother lay back in the carriage ; she looked like 
a dying woman sent out into country air by her doctors as a 
last resource. Village politicians were by no means pleased 
to see the young, delicate, downcast face; they had hoped 
that the new arrival at Saint-Lange would bring some life and 
stir into the neighborhood, and clearly any sort of stir or 
movement must be distasteful to the suffering invalid in the 
traveling carriage. 

That evening, when the notables of Saint-Lange were 
drinking in the private room of the wineshop, the longest 
head among them declared that such depression could admit 
of but one construction — the marquise was ruined. His lord- 
ship the marquis was away in Spain with the Due d’Angouleme 
(so they said in the papers), and beyond a doubt her ladyship 
had come to Saint-Lange to retrench after a run of ill-luck on 
the Bourse. The marquis was one of the greatest gamblers 
on the face of the globe. Perhaps the estate would be cut up 
and sold in little lots. There would be some good strokes of 
business to be made in that case, and it behooved everybody 


78 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


to count up his cash, unearth his savings, and to see how he 
stood, so as to secure his share of the spoil of Saint-Lange. 

So fair did this future seem that the village worthies, dying 
to know whether it was founded on fact, began to think of 
ways of getting at the truth through the servants at the manor- 
house. None of these, however, could throw any light on 
the calamity which had brought their mistress into the country 
at the beginning of winter, and to the old castle of Saint- 
Lange of all places, when she might have- taken her choice of 
cheerful country-houses famous for their beautiful gardens. 

His worship the mayor called to pay his respects ; but he 
did not see the lady. Then the land-steward tried with no 
better success. 

Madame la Marquise kept her room, only leaving it, while 
it was set in order, for the small adjoining drawing-room, 
where she dined ; if, indeed, to sit down to a table, to look 
with disgust at the dishes, and taking the precise amount of 
nourishment required to prevent death from sheer starvation, 
can be called dining. The meal over, she returned at once 
to the old-fashioned low chair, in which she had sat since the 
morning, in the embrasure of the one window that lighted 
her room. 

Her little girl she only saw for a few minutes daily, during 
the dismal dinner, and even for that short time she seemed 
scarcely able to bear the child’s presence. Surely nothing 
but the most unheard-of anguish could have extinguished a 
mother’s love so early. 

None of the servants were suffered to come near, her own 
woman was the one creature whom she liked to have about 
her ; the castle must be perfectly quiet, the child must play at 
the other end of the house. The slightest sound had grown 
so intolerable that any human voice, even the voice of her 
own child, jarred upon her. 

At first the whole countryside was deeply interested in these 
eccentricities \ but time passed on, every possible hypothesis 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY, 


79 


had been advanced to account for them, and the peasants and 
dwellers in the little country towns thought no more of the 
invalid lady. 

So the marquise was left to herself. She might live on, 
perfectly silent, amid the silence which she herself had cre- 
ated ; there was nothing to draw her forth from the tapestried 
chamber where her grandmother had died, whither she her- 
self had come that she might die, gently, without witnesses, 
without importunate solicitude, without suffering from the 
insincere demonstrations of egoism masquerading as affection, 
which double the agony of death in great cities. 

She was twenty-six years old. At that age, with plenty of 
romantic illusions still left, the mind loves to dwell on the 
thought of death when death seems to come as a friend. But 
with youth, death is coy, coming up close only to go away, 
showing himself and hiding again, till youth has time to fall 
out of^love with him during this dalliance. There is that un- 
certainty, too, that hangs over death’s to-morrow. Youth 
plunges back into the world of living men, there to find the 
pain more pitiless than death, that does not wait to strike. 

This woman who refused to live was to know the bitterness 
of these reprieves in the depths of her loneliness ; in moral 
agony, which death would not come to end, she was to serve 
a terrible apprenticeship to the egoism which must take the 
bloom from her heart and break her in to the life of the 
world. 

This harsh and sorry teaching is the usual outcome of our 
early sorrows. For the first, and perhaps for the last time in 
her life, the Marquise d' Aiglemont was in very truth suffering. 
And, indeed, would it not be an error to suppose that the 
same sentiment can be reproduced in us? Once develop the 
power to feel, is it not always there in the depths of our na- 
ture? The accidents of life may lull or awaken it, but there 
it is, of necessity modifying the self, its abiding-place. Hence, 
every sensation should have its great day once and for all, its 


80 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


first day of storm, be it long or short. Hence, likewise, pain, 
the most abiding of our sensations, could be keenly felt only 
at its first irruption, its intensity diminishing with every sub- 
sequent paroxysm, either because we grow accustomed to 
these crises, or perhaps because a natural instinct of self-pre- 
servation asserts itself and opposes to the destroying force of 
anguish an equal but passive force of inertia. 

Yet of all kinds of suffering, to which does the name of an- 
guish belong ? For the loss of parents, Nature has in a manner 
prepared us ; physical suffering, again, is an evil which passes 
over us and is gone ; it lays no hold upon the soul ; if it per- 
sists, it ceases to be an evil, it is death. The young mother 
loses her firstborn, but wedded love ere long gives her a suc- 
cessor. This grief, too, is transient. After all, these, and 
many other troubles like unto them, are in some sort wounds 
and bruises; they do not sap the springs of vitality, and only 
a succession of such blows can crush in us the instinct that 
seeks happiness. Great pain, therefore — pain that rises to an- 
guish — should be suffering so deadly that past, present, and 
future are alike included in its grip and no part of life is left 
sound and whole. Never afterward can we think the same 
thoughts as before. Anguish engraves itself in ineffaceable 
characters on mouth and brow; it passes through us, destroying 
or relaxing the springs that vibrate to enjoyment, leaving be- 
hind in the soul the seeds of a disgust for all things in this 
world. 

Yet, again, to be measureless, to weigh like this upon body 
and soul, the trouble should befall when soul and body have 
just come to their full strength, and smite down a heart that 
beats high with life. Then it is that great scars are made. 
Terrible is the anguish. None, it may be, can issue from this 
soul-sickness without undergoing some dramatic change. 
Those who survive it, those who remain on earth, return to 
the world to wear an actor’s countenance and to play an 
actor’s part. They know the side-scenes whither actors retire 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY, 


81 


to calculate chances, shed their tears, or pass their jests. 
Life holds no inscrutable dark-places for those who have 
passed through this ordeal; their judgments are Rhada- 
manthine. 

For young women of the Marquise d’Aiglemont’s age, this 
first, this most poignant pain of all, is always referable to the 
same cause. A woman, especially if she is a young woman, 
greatly beautiful and by nature great, never fails to stake her 
whole life as instinct and sentiment and society all unite to 
bid her. Suppose that that life fails her, suppose that she still 
lives on, she cannot but endure the most cruel pangs, inas- 
much as a first- love is the loveliest of all. How comes it that 
this catastrophe has found no painter, no poet ? And yet, 
can it be painted ? Can it be sung ? No ; for the anguish 
arising from it eludes analysis and defies the colors of art. 
And more than this, such pain is never confessed. To con- 
sole the sufferer, you must be able to divine the past which she 
hugs in bitterness to her soul like a remorse ; it is like an 
avalanche in a valley, it laid all waste before it found a per- 
manent resting-place. 

The marquise was suffering from this anguish, which will 
for long remain unknown, because the whole world condemns 
it, while sentiment cherishes it, and the conscience of a true 
woman justifies her in it. It is with such pain as with chil- 
dren steadily disowned of life, and therefore bound more 
closely to the mother’s heart than other children more boun- 
teously endowed. Never, perhaps, was the awful catastrophe 
in which the whole world without dies for us, so deadly so 
complete, so cruelly aggravated by circumstance as it had 
been for the marquise. The man whom she had loved was 
young and generous; in obedience to the laws of the world, 
she had refused herself to his love, and he had died to save a 
woman’s honor, as the world calls it. To whom could she 
speak of her misery ? Her tears would be an offense to her 
husband, the origin of the tragedy. By all laws written and 
6 


82 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


unwritten she was bound over to silence. A woman would 
have enjoyed the story ; a man would have schemed for his 
own benefit. No ; such grief as hers can only weep freely in 
solitude and in loneliness; she must consume her pain or be 
consumed by it; die or kill something within her — her con- 
science, it may be. 

Day after day she sat gazing at the flat horizon. It lay out 
before her like her own life to come. There was nothing to 
discover, nothing to hope. The whole of it could be seen at a 
glance. It was the visible presentment in the outward world 
of the chill sense of desolation which was gnawing restlessly 
at her heart. The misty mornings, the pale, bright sky, the 
low clouds scudding under the gray dome of heaven, fitted 
with the moods of her soul-sickness. Her heart did not con- 
tract, was neither more nor less seared, rather it seemed as if 
her youth, in its full blossom, w r as slowly turned to stone by 
an anguish intolerable because it was barren. She suffered 
through herself and for herself. How could it end save in 
self-absorption ? Ugly torturing thoughts probed her con- 
science. Candid self-examination pronounced that she wa9 
double, there were two selves within her ; a woman who felt 
and a woman who thought ; a self that suffered and a self that 
would fain suffer no longer. Her mind traveled back to the 
joys of childish days ; they had gone by, and she had never 
known how happy they were. Scenes crowded up in her 
memory as in a bright mirror-glass, to demonstrate the decep- 
tion of a marriage which — all that it should be in the eyes of 
the world — was in reality so wretched. What had the delicate 
pride of young womanhood done for her — the bliss forgone, 
the sacrifices made to the world? Everything in her ex- 
pressed love, awaited love ; her movements still were full of 
perfect grace ; her smile, her charm, were hers as before ; 
why? she asked herself. The sense of her own youth and 
physical loveliness no more affected her than some meaning- 
less reiterated sound. Her very beauty had grown intolerable 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


83 


to her as a useless thing. She shrank aghast from the thought 
that through the rest of life she must remain an incomplete 
creature ; had not the inner self lost its power of receiving 
impressions with that zest, that exquisite sense of freshness 
which is the spring of so much of life’s gladness? The im- 
pressions of the future would for the most part be effaced as 
soon as received, and many of the thoughts which once would 
have moved her now would move her no more. 

After the childhood of the creature dawns the childhood of 
the heart ; but this second infancy was over, her lover had 
taken it down with him into the grave. The longings of youth 
remained ; she was young yet ; but the completeness of youth 
was gone, and with that lost completeness the whole value 
and savor of life had diminished somewhat. Would she not 
always bear within her the seeds of sadness and mistrust, ready 
to grow up and rob emotion of its springtide of fervor? Con- 
scious she must always be that nothing could give her now the 
happiness so longed for, that seemed so fair in her dreams. 
The fire from heaven that sheds abroad its light in the heart, 
in the dawn of love, had been quenched in tears, the first real 
tears which she had shed ; henceforth she must always suffer, 
because it was no longer in her power to be what once she 
might have been. This is a belief which turns us in aversion 
and bitterness of spirit from any proffered new delight. 

Julie had come to look at life from the point of view of 
age about to die. Young though she felt, the heavyweight 
of joyless days had fallen upon her, and left her broken- 
spirited and old before her time. With a despairing cry, she 
asked the world what it could give her in exchange for the 
love now lost, by which she had lived. She asked herself 
whether in that vanished love, so chaste and pure, her will 
had not been more criminal than her deeds, and chose to 
believe herself guilty ; partly to affront the world, partly for 
her own consolation, in that she had missed the close union 
of body and soul, which diminishes the pain of the one who 


84 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


is left behind by the knowledge that once it has known and 
given joy to the full, and retains within itself the impress of 
that which is no more. 

Something of the mortification of the actress cheated of 
her part mingled with the pain which thrilled through every 
fibre of her heart and brain. Her nature had been thwarted, 
her vanity wounded, her woman’s generosity cheated of self- 
sacrifice. Then, when she had raised all these questions, set 
vibrating all the strings in those different phases of being 
which we distinguish as social, moral, and physical, her ener- 
gies were so far exhausted and relaxed that she was powerless 
to grasp a single thought amid the chaos of conflicting ideas. 

Sometimes, as the mists fell, she would throw her window 
open, and would stay there, motionless, breathing in unheed- 
ingly the damp earthy scent in the air, her mind to all ap- 
pearance an unintelligent blank, for the ceaseless burden of 
sorrow humming in her brain left her deaf to earth’s harmonies 
and insensible to the delights of thought. 

One day, toward noon, when the sun shone out for a little, 
her maid came in without a summons. 

“This is the fourth time that Monsieur le Cure has come 
to see Madame la Marquise ; to-day he is so determined 
about it that we did not know what to tell him.” 

“He has come to ask for some money for the poor, no 
doubt ; take him twenty-five louis from me.” 

The woman went only to return. 

“Monsieur le Cur6 will not take the money, my lady; he 
wants to speak to you.” 

“ Then let him come ! ” said Mme. d’Aiglemont, with an 
involuntary shrug which augured ill for the priest’s reception. 
Evidently the lady meant to put a stop to persecution by a 
short and sharp method. 

Mme. d’Aiglemont had lost her mother in her early child- 
hood, and, as a natural consequence in her bringing-up, she had 
felt the influences of the relaxed notions which loosened the 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


85 


hold of religion upon France during the Revolution. Piety 
is a womanly virtue which women alone can really instill; 
and the marquise, a child of the eighteenth century, had 
adopted her father’s creed of philosophism and practiced no 
religious observances. A priest, to her way of thinking, was a 
civil servant of very doubtful utility. In her present position, 
the teaching of religion could only poison her wounds ; she 
had, moreover, but scanty faith in the lights of country 
parsons, and made up her mind to put this one gently but 
firmly in his place, and to rid herself of him, after the manner 
of the rich, by bestowing a benefit. 

At first sight of the cure the marquise felt no inclination 
to change her mind. She saw before her a stout, rotund little 
man, with a ruddy, wrinkled, elderly face, which awkwardly 
and unsuccessfully tried to smile. His bald, quadrant-shaped 
forehead, furrowed by intersecting lines, was too heavy for 
the rest of his face, which seemed to be dwarfed by it. A 
fringe of scanty, white hair encircled the back of his head, 
and almost reached his ears. Yet the priest looked as if by 
nature he had a genial disposition ; his thick lips, his slightly 
curved nose, his chin which vanished in a double fold of 
wrinkles — all marked him out as a man who took cheerful 
views of life. 

At first the marquise saw nothing but these salient charac- 
teristics, but at the first word she was struck by the sweetness 
of the speaker’s voice. Looking at him more closely, she 
saw that the eyes under the grizzled eyebrows had shed tears, 
and his face, turned in profile, wore so sublime an impress 
of sorrow that the marquise recognized the man in the cure. 

“ Madame la Marquise, the rich only come within our 
province when they are in trouble. It is easy to see that 
the troubles of a young, beautiful, and wealthy married woman, 
who has lost neither children nor relatives, are caused by 
wounds whose pangs religion alone can soothe. Your soul is 
in danger, madame. I am not now speaking of the hereafter 


86 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


which awaits us. No, I am not in the confessional. But it 
is my duty, is it not, to open your eyes to your future life 
here on earth? You will pardon an old man, will you not, 
for the importunity which has your own happiness for its 
object ? ’ ’ 

“There is no more happiness for me, monsieur. I shall 
soon be, as you say, in your province; but it will be for 
ever.” 

“ Nay, madame. You will not die of this pain which lies 
heavy upon you, and can be read in your face. If you had 
been destined to die of it, you would not be here at Saint- 
Lange. A definite regret is not so deadly as hope deferred. 
I have known others pass through more intolerable and more 
awful anguish, and yet they live.” 

The marquise looked incredulous. 

“ Madame, I know a man whose affliction was so sore that 
your trouble would seem to you to be light compared with 
his.” 

Perhaps the long solitary hours had begun to hang heavily ; 
perhaps in the recesses of the marquise’s mind lay the thought 
that here was a friendly heart to whom she might be able to 
pour out her troubles. However it was, she gave the rector a 
questioning glance which could not be mistaken. 

“ Madame,” he continued, “ the man of whom I tell you 
had but three children left of a once large family circle. He 
lost his parents, his daughter, and his wife, whom he dearly 
loved. He was left alone at last on the little farm where he 
had lived so happily for so long. His three sons were in the 
army, and each of the lads had risen in proportion to his time 
of service. During the Hundred Days, the oldest went into 
the Guard with a colonel’s commission ; the second was a 
major in the artillery ; the youngest a major in a regiment of 
dragoons. Madame, those three boys loved their father as 
much as he loved them. If you but knew how careless young 
fellows grow of home ties when they are carried away by the 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


87 


current of their own lives, you would realize from this one 
little thing how warmly they loved the lonely old father, who 
only lived in and for them — never a week passed without a 
letter from one of the boys. But, then, he on his side had 
never been weakly indulgent, to lessen their respect for him ; 
nor unjustly severe, to thwart their affection ; nor apt to 
grudge sacrifices, the thing that estranges children’s hearts. 
He had been more than a father ; he had been a brother to 
them, and their friend. 

4 ‘At last he went to Paris to bid them good-by before they 
set out for Belgium ; he wished to see that they had good 
horses and all that they needed. And so they went, and the 
father returned to his home again. Then the war began. 
He had letters from Fleurus, and again from Ligny. All went 
well. Then came the battle of Waterloo, and you know the 
rest. France was plunged into mourning ; every family 
waited in intense anxiety for news. You may imagine, mad- 
ame, how the old man waited for tidings, in anxiety that 
knew nor peace nor rest. He used to read the gazettes ; he 
went to the coach-office every day. One evening he was told 
that the colonel’s servant had come. The man was riding 
his master’s horse — what need was there to ask any questions? 
— the colonel was dead, cut in two by a shell. Before the 
evening was out the youngest son’s servant arrived — the 
youngest had died on the eve of the battle. At midnight 
came a gunner with tidings of the death of the last ; upon 
whom, in those few hours, the poor father had centred all his 
life. Madame, they all had fallen.” 

After a pause the good man controlled his feelings, and 
added gently — 

“And their father is still living, madame. He realized 
that if God had left him on earth, he was bound to live on 
and suffer on earth ; but he took refuge in the sanctuary. 
What could he be ? ” 

The marquise looked up and saw the curb’s face, grown 


88 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


sublime in its sorrow and resignation, and waited for him to 
speak. When the words came, tears broke from her. 

“A priest, madame; consecrated by his own tears pre- 
viously shed at the foot of the altar.” 

Silence prevailed for a little. The marquise and the cure 
looked out at the foggy landscape, as if they could see the 
figures of those who were no more. 

“ Not a priest in a city, but a simple country cure,” added 
he. 

“ At Saint-Lange ? ” she said, drying her eyes. 

“ Yes, madame.” 

Never had the majesty of grief seemed so great to Julie. 
The two words sank straight into her heart with the weight of 
an infinite sorrow. The gentle, sonorous tones troubled her 
heart. Ah ! that full, deep voice, charged with undulated 
vibration, was the voice of one who had suffered indeed. 

“And if I do not die, monsieur, what will become of me?” 
The marquise spoke almost reverently. 

“ Have you not a child, madame? ” 

“Yes,” she said stiffly. 

The cure gave her a glance such as a doctor gives a patient 
whose life is in danger. Then he determined to do all that 
in him lay to combat the evil spirit into whose clutches she 
had fallen. 

“We must live on with our sorrows — you see it yourself, 
madame — and religion alone offers us real consolation. Will 
you permit me to come again ? to speak to you as a man who 
can sympathize with every trouble, a man about whom there 
is nothing very alarming, I think?” 

“ Yes, monsieur, come back again. Thank you for your 
thought of me.” 

“Very well, madame; then I shall return very shortly.” 

This visit relaxed the tension of soul, as it were ; the heavy 
strain of grief and loneliness had been almost too much for the 
marquise’s strength. The priest’s visit had left a soothing 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


89 


balm in her heart, his words thrilled through her with healing 
influence. She began to feel something of a prisoner’s satis- 
faction when, after he has had time to feel his utter loneliness 
and the weight of his chains, he hears a neighbor knocking on 
the wall, and welcomes the sound which brings a sense of 
human fellowship. Here was an unhoped-for confidant. But 
this feeling did not last for long. Soon she sank back into 
the old bitterness of spirit, saying to herself, as the prisoner 
might say, that a companion in misfortune could neither 
lighten her own bondage nor her future. 

In the first visit the cure had feared to alarm the suscepti- 
bilities of self-absorbed grief, in a second interview he hoped 
to make some progress toward religion. He came back again 
two days later, and from the marquise’s welcome it was plain 
that she had looked forward to the visit. 

“ Well, Madame la Marquise, have you given a little thought 
to the great mass of human suffering ? Have you raised your 
eyes above our earth and seen the immensity of the universe? 
the worlds beyond worlds which crush our vanity into insig- 
nificance, and with our vanity reduce our sorrows? ” 

“ No, monsieur,” she said ; “ I cannot rise to such heights, 
our social laws lie too heavily upon me and rend my heart 
with a too poignant anguish. And laws, perhaps, are less cruel 
than the usages of the world. Ah ! the world ! ” 

“ Madame, we must obey both. Law is the doctrine, and 
custom the practice of society.” 

“Obey society?” cried the marquise, with an involuntary 
shudder. “Eh ! monsieur, it is the source of all our woes. 
God laid down no law to make us miserable ; but mankind, 
uniting together in social life, have perverted God’s work. 
Civilization deals harder measure to us women than nature 
does. Nature imposes upon us physical suffering which you 
have not alleviated ; civilization has developed in us thoughts 
and feelings which you cheat continually. Nature extermi- 
nates the weak ; you condemn them to live, and, by so doing, 

D 


90 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


consign them to a life of misery. The whole weight of the 
burden of marriage, an institution on which society is based, 
falls upon us ; for the man liberty, duties for the woman. We 
must give up our whole lives to you, you are only bound to 
give us a few moments of yours. A man, in fact, makes a 
choice, while we blindly submit. Oh, monsieur, to you I can 
speak freely. Marriage, in these days, seems to me to be 
legalized prostitution. This is the cause of my wretchedness. 
But among so many miserable creatures so unhappily yoked, 
I alone am bound to be silent, I alone am to blame for my 
misery. My marriage was my own doing.” 

She stopped short, and bitter tears fell in the silence. 

“ In the depths of my wretchedness, in the midst of this sea 
of distress,” she went on, “ I found some sands on which to 
set foot and suffer at leisure. A great tempest swept every- 
thing away. And here am I, helpless and alone, too weak to 
cope with storms.” 

“ We are never weak while God is with us,” said the priest. 
“And if your cravings for affection cannot be satisfied here 
on earth, have you no duties to perform?” 

“Duties continually!” she exclaimed, with something of 
impatience in her tone. “ But where for me are the senti- 
ments which give us strength to perform them ? Nothing from 
nothing, nothing for nothing — this, monsieur, is one of the 
most inexorable laws of nature, physical or spiritual. Would 
you have these trees break into leaf without the sap which 
swells the buds? It is the same with our human nature; and 
in me the sap is dried up at its source.” 

“ I am not going to speak to you of religious sentiments of 
which resignation is born,” said the rector, “but of mother- 
hood, madame, surely ” 

“Stop, monsieur!” said the marquise, “with you I will 
be sincere. Alas ! in future I can be sincere with no one ; I 
am condemned to falsehood. The world requires continual 
grimaces, and we are bidden to obey its conventions if we 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


91 


would escape reproach. There are two kinds of motherhood, 
monsieur; once I knew nothing of such distinctions, but I 
know them now. Only half of me has become a mother; it 
were better for me if I had not been a mother at all. Helene 
is not his child ! Oh ! do not start. At Saint-Lange there 
are volcanic depths whence come lurid gleams of light and 
earthquake shocks to shake the fragile edifices of laws not 
based on nature. I have borne a child, that is enough, I am 
a mother in the eye of the law. But you, monsieur, with 
your delicately compassionate soul, can perhaps understand 
this cry from an unhappy woman who has suffered no lying 
illusions to enter her heart. God will judge me, but surely I 
have only obeyed His laws by giving way to the affections 
which He Himself set in me, and this I have learned from 
my own soul. What is a child, monsieur, but the image of 
two beings, the fruit of two sentiments spontaneously blended? 
Unless it is owned by every fibre of the body, as by every 
chord of tenderness in the heart ; unless it recalls the bliss 
of love, the hours, the places where two creatures were 
happy, their words that overflowed with the music of humanity, 
and their sweet imaginings, that child is an incomplete crea- 
tion. Yes, those two should find the poetic dreams of their 
intimate double life realized in their child as in an exquisite 
miniature; it should be for them a never-failing spring of 
emotion, implying their whole past and their whole future. 

“ My poor little Helene is her father’s child, the offspring 
of duty and of chance. In me she finds nothing but the 
affection of instinct, the woman’s natural compassion for the 
child of her womb. Socially speaking, I am above reproach. 
Have I not sacrificed my life and my happiness to my child ? 
Her cries go to my heart; if she were to fall into the water, I 
should spring to save her, but she is not in my heart. 

“Ah ! love set me dreaming of a motherhood far greater 
and more complete. In a vanished dream I held in my arms 
a child conceived in desire before it was begotten, the ex- 


92 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


quisite flower of life that blossoms in the soul before it sees 
the light of day. I am Helene’s mother only in the sense 
that I brought her forth. When she needs me no longer, 
there will be an end of my motherhood ; with the extinction 
of the cause, the effects will cease. If it is a woman’s adorable 
prerogative that her motherhood may last through her child’s 
life, surely that divine persistence of sentiment is due to the 
far-reaching glory of the conception of the soul? Unless a 
child has lain wrapped about from life’s first beginnings by 
the mother’s soul, the instinct of motherhood dies in her as 
in the animals. This is true ; I feel that it is true. As my 
poor little one grows older, my heart closes. My sacrifices 
have driven us apart. And yet I know, monsieur, that to 
another child my heart would have gone out in inexhaustible 
love; for that other I should not have known what sacrifice 
meant, all had been delight. In this, monsieur, my instincts are 
stronger than reason, stronger than religion or all else in me. 
Does the woman who is neither wife nor mother sin in wish- 
ing to die when, for her misfortune, she has caught a glimpse 
of the infinite beauty of love, the limitless joy of motherhood? 
What can become of her? / can tell you what she feels. I 
cannot put that memory from me so resolutely but that a 
hundred times, night and day, visions of a happiness, greater 
it may be than the reality, rise before me, followed by a 
shudder which shakes brain and heart and body. Before 
these cruel visions, my feelings and thoughts grow colorless, 
and I ask myself : ‘ What would my life have been if- ? ’ ” 

She hid her face in her hands and burst into tears. 

“ There you see the depths of my heart ! ” she continued. 
“ For his child I could have acquiesced in any lot however 
dreadful. He who died, bearing the burden of the sins of the 
world, will forgive this thought of which I am dying ; but the 
world, I know, is merciless. In its ears my words are blas- 
phemies ; I am outraging all its codes. Oh ! that I could wage 
war against this world and break down and refashion its laws 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


93 


and traditions! Has it not turned all my thoughts, and feel- 
ings, and longings, and hopes, and every fibre in me into so 
many sources of pain? Spoiled my future, present and past? 
For me the daylight is full of gloom, my thoughts pierce me 
like a sword, my child is and is not. 

“ Oh, when Helene speaks to me, I wish that her voice were 
different, when she looks into my face I wish that she had 
other eyes. She constantly keeps me in mind of all that 
should have been and is not. I cannot bear to have her near 
me. I smile at her, I try to make up to her for the real affec- 
tion of which she is defrauded. I am wretched, monsieur, too 
wretched to live. And I am supposed to be a pattern wife. 
And I have committed no sins. And I am respected ! I 
have fought down forbidden love which sprang up unaware 
within me ; but if I have kept the letter of the law, have I 
kept it in my heart? There has never been but one here,” 
she said, laying her right hand on her breast, “one and no 
other ; and my child feels it. Certain looks and tones and 
gestures mould a child’s nature, and my poor little one feels 
no thrill in the arm I put about her, no tremor comes into my 
voice, no softness into my eyes when I speak to her or take 
her up. She looks at me, and I cannot endure the reproach 
in her eyes. There are times when I shudder to think that 
some day she may be my judge and condemn her mother un- 
heard. Heaven grant that hate may not grow up between us! 
Ah ! God in heaven, rather let the tomb open for me, rather 
let me end my days here at Saint-Lange ! I want to go back 
to the world where I shall find my other soul and become 
wholly a mother. Ah ! forgive me, sir, I am mad. Those 
words were choking me; now they are spoken. Ah ! you are 
weeping too ! You will not despise me ” 

She heard the child come in from a walk. “ Helene, 
Helene, my child, come here!” she called. The words 
sounded like a cry of despair. 

The little girl ran in, laughing and calling to her mother to 


94 


A W OMAN OF THIRTY. 


see a butterfly which she had caught ; but at the sight of that 
mother’s tears she grew quiet of a sudden, and went up close, 
and received a kiss on her forehead. 

“ She will be very beautiful some day,” said the priest. 

“She is her father’s child,” said the marquise, kissing the 
little one with eager warmth, as if she meant to pay a debt of 
affection or to extinguish some feeling of remorse. 

“ How hot you are, mamma ! ” 

“ There, go away, my angel,” said the marquise. 

The child went. She did not seem at all sorry to go ; she 
did not look back ; glad perhaps to escape from a sad face, 
and instinctively comprehending already an antagonism of 
feeling in its expression. A mother’s love finds language in 
smiles; they are a part of the divine right of motherhood. 
The marquise could not smile. She flushed red as she felt 
the cure’s eyes. She had hoped to act a mother’s part before 
him, but neither she nor her child could deceive him. And, 
indeed, when a woman loves sincerely, in the kiss she gives 
there is a divine honey ; it is as if a soul were breathed forth 
in the caress, a subtle flame of fire which brings warmth to the 
heart ; the kiss that lacks this delicious unction is meagre and 
formal. The priest had felt the difference. He could fathom 
the depths that lie between the motherhood of the flesh and 
the motherhood of the heart. He gave the marquise a keen, 
scrutinizing glance, then he said — 

“ You are right, madame ; it would be better for you if you 
were dead ” 

“ Ah ! ” she cried, “ then you know all my misery ; I see 
you do if, Christian priest as you are, you can guess my de- 
termination to die and sanction it. Yes, I meant to die, but 
I have lacked the courage. The spirit was strong, but the 
flesh was weak, and when my hand did not tremble, the spirit 
within me wavered. 

“I do not know the reason of these inner struggles and 
alternations. I am very pitiably a woman, no doubt, weak in 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


95 


my will, strong only to love. Oh, I despise myself. At 
night, when all my household was asleep, I would go out 
bravely as far as the lake ; but when I stood on the brink my 
cowardice shrank from self-destruction. To you I will confess 
my weakness. When I lay in my bed again, shame would 
come over me and courage would come back. Once I took 
a dose of laudanum ; I was ill, but I did not die. I thought 
I had emptied the phial, but I had only taken half the dose.” 

“You are lost, madame,” the cure said gravely, with tears 
in his voice. “You will go back into the world, and you will 
deceive the world. You will seek and find a compensation 
(as you imagine it to be) for your woes ; then will come a day 
of reckoning for your pleasures ” 

“ Do you think,” she cried, “ that I shall bestow the last, 
the most precious treasures of my heart upon the first base im- 
postor who can play the comedy of passion ? That I would 
pollute my life for a moment of doubtful pleasure? No ; the 
flame which shall consume my soul shall be love, and nothing 
but love. All men, monsieur, have the senses of their sex, 
but not all have the man’s soul which satisfies all the require- 
ments of our nature, drawing out the melodious harmony 
which never breaks forth save in response to the pressure of 
feeling. Such a soul is not found twice in our lifetime. The 
future that lies before me is hideous ; I know it. A woman is 
nothing without love ; beauty is nothing without pleasure. 
And even if happiness were offered to me a second time, 
would not the world frown upon it ? I owe my daughter an 
honored mother. Oh ! I am condemned to live in an iron 
circle, from which there is but one shameful way of escape. 
The round of family duties, a thankless and irksome task, is 
in store for me. I shall curse life ; but my child shall have at 
least a fair semblance of a mother. I will give her treasures 
of virtue for the treasures of love of which I defraud her. 

“ I have not even the mother’s desire to live to enjoy her 
child’s happiness. I have no belief in happiness. What will 




96 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


Helene’s fate be ? My own, beyond doubt. How can a 
mother insure that the man to whom she gives her daughter 
will be the husband of her heart ? You pour scorn on the 
miserable creatures who sell themselves for a few coins to any 
passer-by, though want and hunger absolve the brief union ; 
while another union, horrible for quite other reasons, is toler- 
ated, nay, encouraged, by society, and a young and innocent 
girl is married to a man whom she has only met occasionally 
during the previous three months. She is sold for her whole 
lifetime. It is true that the price is high ! If you allow her 
| no compensation for her sorrows, you might at least respect 
her; but no, the most virtuous of women cannot escape 
calumny. This is our fate in its double aspect. Open pros- 
titution and shame ; secret prostitution and unhappiness. 
As for the poor, portionless girls, they may die or go mad, 
without a soul to pity them. Beauty aud virtue are not 
marketable in the bazaar where souls and bodies are bought 
and sold — in the den of selfishness which you call society. 
Why not disinherit daughters? Then, at least, you might 
fulfill one of the laws of nature, and, guided by your own in- 
clinations, choose your companions.” 

“ Madame, from your talk it is clear to me that neither the 
spirit of family nor the sense of religion appeals to you. Why 
should you hesitate between the claims of the social selfishness 
which irritates you and the purely personal selfishness which 
craves satisfactions ” 

“The family, monsieur — does such a thing exist? I de- 
cline to recognize as a family a knot of individuals bidden by 
society to divide the property after the death of father and 
mother, and to go their separate ways. A family means a 
temporary association of persons brought together by no will 
of their own, dissolved at once by death. Our laws have 
broken up homes and estates, and the old family tradition 
handed down from generation to generation. I see nothing 
but wreck and ruin about me.” 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


97 


“ Madame, you will only return to God when His hand 
has been heavy upon you, and I pray that you have time 
enough given to you in which to make your peace with Him. 
Instead of looking to heaven for comfort, you are fixing your 
eyes on earth. Philosophism and personal interest have in- 
vaded your heart ; like the children of the skeptical eighteenth 
century, you are deaf to the voice of religion. The pleasures 
of this life bring nothing but misery. You are about to make 
an exchange of sorrows, that is all.” 

She smiled bitterly. 

“ I will falsify your predictions,” she said. “ I shall be 
faithful to him who died for me.” 

“Sorrow,” he answered, “is not likely to live long save 
in souls disciplined by religion,” and he lowered his eyes 
respectfully lest the marquise should read his doubts in them. 
The energy of her outburst had grieved him. He had seen 
the self that lurked beneath so many forms, and despaired of 
softening a heart which affliction seemed to sear. The divine 
Sower’s seed could not take root in such a soil, and His gentle 
voice was drowned by the clamorous outcry of self-pity. Yet 
the good man returned again and again with an apostle’s 
earnest persistence, brought back by a hope of leading so 
noble and proud a soul to God ; until the day when he made 
the discovery that the marquise only cared to talk with him 
because it was sweet to speak of him who was no more. He 
would not lower his ministry by condoning her passion, and 
confined the conversation more and more to generalities and 
commonplaces. 

Spring came, and with the spring the marquise found dis- 
traction from her deep melancholy. She busied herself for 
lack of other occupation with her estate, making improve- 
ments for amusement. 

In October she left the old castle. In the life of leisure at 
Saint-Lange she had recovered from her grief and grown fair 
and fresh. Her grief had been violent at first in its course, 

7 


98 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY \ 


as the quoit hurled forth with all the player’s strength, and 
like the quoit after many oscillations, each feebler than the 
last, it had slackened into melancholy. Melancholy is made 
up of a succession of such oscillations, the first touching upon 
despair, the last on the border between pain and pleasure ; in 
youth, it is the twilight of dawn ; in age, the dusk of night. 

As the marquise drove through the village in her traveling 
carriage, she met the priest on his way back from the church. 
She bowed in response to his farewell greeting, but it was 
with lowered eyes and averted face. She did not wish to see 
him again. The village rector had judged this poor Diana 
of Ephesus only too well. 



III. 


AT THIRTY YEARS. 

Madame Firmiani was giving a ball. M. Charles de Vande- 
nesse, a young man of great promise, the bearer of one of 
those historic names which, in spite of the efforts of legislation, 
are always associated with the glory of France, had received 
letters of introduction to some of the great lady’s friends in 
Naples, and had come to thank the hostess and to take his 
leave. 

Vandenesse had already acquitted himself creditably on 
several diplomatic missions; and now that he had received an 
appointment as attache to a plenipotentiary at the Congress 
of Laybach, he wished to take advantage of the opportunity 
to make some study of Italy on the way. This ball was a sort 
of farewell to Paris and its amusements and its rapid whirl 
of life, to the great eddying intellectual centre and mael- 
strom of pleasure ; and a pleasant thing it is to be borne along 
by the current of this sufficiently slandered great city of Paris. 
Yet Charles de Vandenesse had little to regret, accustomed 
as he had been for the past three years to salute European 
capitals and turn his back upon them at the capricious bidding 
of a diplomatist’s destiny. Women no longer made any 
impression upon him ; perhaps he thought that a real passion 
would play too large a part in a diplomatist’s life; or perhaps 
that the paltry amusements of frivolity were too empty for a 
man of strong character. We all of us have huge claims to 
strength of character. There is no man in France, be he 
never so ordinary a member of the rank and file of humanity, 
that will waive pretensions to something beyond mere clever- 
ness. 

Charles, young though he was — he was scarcely turned 

( 99 ) 


LOfC. 


100 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


thirty — looked at life with a philosophic mind, concerning 
himself with theories and means and ends, while other men of 
his age were thinking of pleasure, sentiments, and the like illu- 
sions. He forced back into some inner depth the generosity 
and enthusiasms of youth, and by nature he was generous. He 
tried hard to be cool and calculating, to coin the fund of 
wealth which chanced to be in his nature into gracious 
manners, and courtesy, and attractive arts; ’tis the proper 
task of an ambitious man to play a sorry part to gain “ a good 
position,” as we call it in modern days. 

He had been dancing, and now he gave a farewell glance 
over the rooms, to carry away a distinct impression of the 
ball, moved, doubtless, to some extent by the feeling which 
prompts a theatre-goer to stay in his box to see the final 
tableau before the curtain falls. But M. de Vandenesse had 
another reason for his survey. He gazed curiously at the 
scene before him, so French in character and in movement, 
seeking to carry away a picture of the light and laughter and 
the faces at this Parisian f&te, to compare with novel faces and 
picturesque surroundings awaiting him at Naples, where he 
meant to spend a few days before presenting himself at his 
post. He seemed to be drawing the comparsion now between 
this France so variable, changing even as you study her, with 
the manners and aspects of that other land known to him as 
yet only by contradictory hearsay tales or books of travel, for 
the most part unsatisfactory. Thoughts of a somewhat poetical 
cast, albeit hackneyed and trite to our modern ideas, crossed 
his brain, in response to some longing of which, perhaps, he 
himself was hardly conscious, a desire in the depths of a 
heart fastidious rather than jaded, vacant rather than seared. 

“ These are the wealthiest and most fashionable women and 
the greatest ladies in Paris,” he said to himself. “ These are 
the great men of the day, great orators and men of letters, 
great names and titles ; artists and men in power ; and yet in 
it all it seems to me as if there were nothing but petty in- 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


101 


trigues and still-born loves, meaningless smiles and causeless 
scorn, eyes lighted by no flame within, brain-power in abun- 
dance running aimlessly to waste. All those pink-and-white 
faces are here not so much for enjoyment, as to escape from 
dullness. None of the emotion is genuine. If you ask for 
nothing but court feathers properly adjusted, fresh gauzes and 
pretty toilets and fragile, fair women, if you desire simply to 
skim the surface of life, here is your world for you. Be con- 
tent with meaningless phrases and fascinating simpers, and do 
not ask for real feeling. For my own part, I abhor the stale 
intrigues which end in sub-prefectures and receiver-generals’ 
places and marriages; or, if love comes into the question, in 
stealthy compromises, so ashamed are we of the mere sem- 
blance of passion. Not a single one of all these eloquent 
faces tells you of a soul, a soul wholly absorbed by one idea 
as by remorse. Regrets and misfortune go about shame- 
facedly clad in jests. There is not one woman here whose 
resistance I should care to overcome, not one who could drag 
you down to the pit. Where will you find energy in Paris ? A 
poniard here is a curious toy to hang from a gilt nail, in a pic- 
turesque sheath to match. The women, the brains, and hearts 
of Paris are all on a par. There is no passion left, because we 
have no individuality. High birth and intellect and fortune 
are all reduced to one level; we have all taken to the uniform 
black coat by way of mourning for a dead France. There is 
no love between equals. Between two lovers there should be 
differences to efface, wide gulfs to fill. The charm of love fled 
from us in 1789. Our dullness and our humdrum lives are the 
outcome of the political system. Italy, at any rate, is the 
land of sharp contrasts. Woman there is a malevolent 
animal, a dangerous unreasoning siren, guided only by her 
tastes and appetites, a creature no more to be trusted than a 
tiger ” 

Mine. Firmiani here came up to interrupt this soliloquy 
made up of vague, conflicting, and fragmentary thoughts 


102 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


which cannot be reproduced in words. The whole charm of 
such musing lies in its vagueness — what is it but a sort of 
mental haze? 

“ I want to introduce you to some one who has the greatest 
wish to make your acquaintance, after all that she has heard 
of you,” said the lady, taking his arm. 

She brought him into the next room, and, with such a smile 
and glance as a Parisienne alone can give, she indicated a 
woman sitting by the hearth. 

“ Who is she? ” the Comte de Vandenesse asked quickly. 

“ You have heard her name more than once coupled with 
praise or blame. She is a woman who lives in seclusion — a 
perfect mystery.” 

“ Oh ! if ever you have been merciful in your life, for pity’s 
sake, tell me her name.” 

“ She is the Marquise d’Aiglemont.” 

“I will take lessons from her; she has managed to make a 
peer of France of that eminently ordinary person her husband, 
and a dullard into a power in the land. But, pray tell me this, 
did Lord Grenville die for her sake, do you think, as some 
women say?” 

“Possibly. Since that adventure, real or imaginary, she is 
very much changed, poor thing ! She has not gone into so- 
ciety since. Four years of constancy — that is something in 

Paris. If she is here to-night ” Here Mme. Firmiani 

broke off, adding with a mysterious expression, “lam forget- 
ting that I must say nothing. Go and talk with her.” 

For a moment Charles stood motionless, leaning lightly 
against the frame of the doorway, wholly absorbed in his 
scrutiny of a woman who had become famous no one knew 
exactly how or why. Such curious anomalies are frequent 
enough in the world. Mme. d’Aiglemont’s reputation was 
certainly no more extraordinary than plenty of other great rep- 
utations. There are men who are always in travail of some 
great work which never sees the light, statisticians held to be 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


103 


profound on the score of calculations which they take very 
good care not to publish, politicians who live on a newspaper 
article, men of letters and artists whose performances are never 
given to the world, men of science who pass current among 
those who know nothing of science, much as Sganarelle is a 
Latinist for those who know no Latin ; there are the men who 
are allowed by general consent to possess a peculiar capacity 
for some one thing, be it for the direction of arts, or for the 
conduct of an important mission. The admirable phrase, “A 
man with a special subject," might have been invented on 
purpose for these acephalous species in the domain of literature 
and politics. 

Charles gazed longer than he intended. He was vexed 
with himself for feeling so strongly interested ; it is true, how- 
ever, that the lady’s appearance was a refutation of the young 
man’s ballroom generalizations. 

The marquise had reached her thirtieth year. She was 
beautiful in spite of her fragile form and extremely delicate 
look. Her greatest charm lay in her still face, revealing un- 
fathomed depths of soul. Some haunting, ever-present thought 
veiled, as it were, the full brilliance of eyes which told of a 
fevered life and boundless resignation. So seldom did she 
raise the eyelids soberly downcast, and so listless were her 
glances, that it almost seemed as if the fire in her eyes were 
reserved for some occult contemplation. Any man of genius 
and feeling must have felt strangely attracted by her gentle- 
ness and silence. If the mind sought to explain the myste- 
rious problem of a constant inward turning from the present 
to the past, the soul was no less interested in initiating itself 
into the secrets of a heart proud in some sort of its anguish. 
Everything about her, moreover, was in keeping with these 
thoughts which she inspired. Like almost all women who 
have very long hair, she was very pale and perfectly white. 
The marvelous fineness of her skin (that almost unerring sign) 
indicated a quick sensibility which could be seen yet more 


104 


A WOMAN 1 OF THIRTY. 


unmistakably in her features; there was the same minpte and 
wonderful delicacy of finish in them that the Chinese art<st 
gives to his fantastic figures. Perhaps her neck was rather 
too long, but such necks belong to the most graceful type, and 
suggest vague affinities between a woman’s head and the mag- 
netic curves of the serpent. Leave not a single one of the 
thousand signs and tokens by which the most inscrutable char- 
acter betrays itself to an observer of human nature, he has but 
to watch carefully the little movements of a woman’s head, 
the ever-varying expressive turns and curves of her neck and 
throat, to read her nature. 

Mme. d’Aiglemont’s dress harmonized with the haunting 
thought that informed the whole woman. Her hair was 
gathered up into a tall coronet of broad plaits, without orna- 
ment of any kind ; she seemed to have bidden farewell foi 
ever to elaborate toilettes. Nor were any of the small arts of 
coquetry which spoil so many women to be detected in her. 
Perhaps her bodice, modest though it was, did not altogethei 
conceal the dainty grace of her figure ; perhaps, too, her gown 
looked rich from the extreme distinction of its fashion ; and 
if it is permissible to look for expression in the arrangement 
of stuffs, surely those numerous straight folds invested her with 
a great dignity. There may have been some lingering trace 
of the indelible feminine foible in the minute care bestowed 
upon her hand and foot; yet, if she allowed them to be seen 
with some pleasure, it would have tasked the utmost malice of 
a rival to discover any affectation in her gestures, so natural 
did they seem, so much a part of old childish habit, that her 
careless grace absolved this vestige of vanity. 

All these little characteristics, the nameless trifles which 
combine to make up the sum of a woman’s prettiness or ugli- 
ness, her charm or lack of charm, can only be indicated, 
when, as with Mme. d’Aiglemont, a personality dominates 
and gives coherence to the details, informing them, blending 
them all in an exquisite whole. Her manner was perfectly in 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


105 


accord with her style of beauty and her dress. Only to 
certain women at a certain age is it given to put language 
into their attitude. Is it joy or is it sorrow that teaches a 
woman of thirty the secret of that eloquence of carriage, so 
that she must always remain an enigma which each interprets 
by the aid of his hopes, desires, or theories ? 

The way in which the marquise leaned both elbows on the 
arm of her chair, the toying of her interclasped fingers, 
the curve of her throat, the indolent lines of her languid but 
lissome body as she lay back in graceful exhaustion, as it 
were ; her indolent limbs, her unstudied pose, the utter lassi- 
tude of her movements, all suggested that this was a woman 
for whom life had lost its interest, a woman who had known 
the joys of love only in dreams, a woman bowed down by the 
burden of memories of the past, a woman who had long since 
despaired of the future and despaired of herself, an unoccupied 
woman who took the emptiness of her own life for the nothing- 
ness of life. 

Charles de Vandenesse saw and admired the beautiful pic- 
ture before him, as a kind of artistic success beyond an ordi- 
nary woman’s powers of attainment. He was acquainted with 
d’Aiglemont ; and now, at the first sight of d’Aiglemont’s 
wife, the young diplomatist saw at a glance a disproportionate 
marriage, an incompatibility (to use the legal jargon) so great 
that it was impossible that the marquise should love her hus- 
band. And yet — the Marquise d’Aiglemont’s life was above 
reproach, and for any observer the mystery about her was the 
more interesting on this account. The first impulse of sur- 
prise over, Vandenesse cast about for the best way of approach- 
ing Mme. d’Aiglemont. He would try a commonplace piece 
of diplomacy, he thought ; he would disconcert her by a 
piece of clumsiness and see how she would receive it. 

“Madame,” he said, seating himself near her, “through a 
fortunate indiscretion I have learned that, for some reason 
unknown to me, I have had the good fortune to attract your 


106 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


notice. I owe you the more thanks because I have never 
been so honored before. At the same time, you are respon- 
sible for one of my faults, for I mean never to be modest 
again ” 

“You will make a mistake, monsieur,’ ' she laughed; 
“ vanity should be left to those who have nothing else to 
recommend them.” 

The conversation thus opened ranged at large, in the usual 
way, over a multitude of topics — art and literature, politics, 
men and things — till insensibly they fell to talking of the 
eternal theme in France and all the world over — love, senti- 
ment, and women. 

“ We are bond-slaves.* * 

“You are queens.’* 

This was the gist and substance of all the more or less 
ingenuous discourse between Charles and the marquise, as of 
all such discourses — past, present, and to come. Allow a 
certain space of time, and the two formulas shall begin to 
mean “ Love me,” and “ I will love you.” 

“Madame,” Charles de Vandenesse exclaimed under his 
breath, “you have made me bitterly regret that I am leaving 
Paris. In Italy I certainly shall not pass hours in intellectual 
enjoyment such as this has been.” 

“ Perhaps, monsieur, you will find happiness, and happiness 
is worth more than all the brilliant things, true and false, that 
are said every evening in Paris.” 

Before Charles took leave, he asked permission to pay a 
farewell call on the Marquise d’Aiglemont, and very lucky did 
he feel himself when the form of words in which he expressed 
himself for once was used in all sincerity ; and that night, and 
all day long on the morrow, he could not put the thought of 
the marquise out of his mind. 

At times he wondered why she had singled him out, what 
she had meant when she asked him to come to see her, and 
thought supplied an inexhaustible commentary. Again it 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


107 


seemed to him that he had discovered the motives of her curi- 
osity, and he grew intoxicated with hope or frigidly sober 
with each new construction put upon that piece of common- 
place civility. Sometimes it meant everything, sometimes 
nothing. He made up his mind at last that he would not 
yield to this inclination, and — went to call on Mme. d’ Aigle- 
mont. 

There are thoughts which determine our conduct, while we 
do not so much as suspect their existence. If at first sight 
this assertion appears to be less a truth than a paradox, let 
any candid inquirer look into his own life and he shall find 
abundant confirmation therein. Charles went to Mme. 
d’Aiglemont, and so obeyed one of these latent, preexistent 
germs of thought, of which our experience and our intel- 
lectual gains and achievements are but later and tangible de- 
velopments. 

For a young man a woman of thirty has irresistible attrac- 
tions. There is nothing more natural, nothing better estab- 
lished, no human tie of stouter tissue than the heart-deep at- 
tachment between such a woman as the Marquise d’ Aiglemont 
and such a man as Charles de Vandenesse. You can see ex- 
amples of it every day in the world. A girl, as a matter of 
fact, has too many young illusions, she is too inexperienced, 
the instinct of sex counts for too much in her love fora young 
man to feel flattered by it. A woman of thirty knows all that 
is involved in the self-surrender to be made. Among the im- 
pulses of the first, put curiosity and other motives than love ; 
the second acts with integrity of sentiment. The first yields ; 
the second makes deliberate choice. Is not that choice in 
itself an immense flattery? A woman armed with experience, 
forewarned by knowledge, almost always dearly bought, seems 
to give more than herself ; while the inexperienced and cred- 
ulous girl, unable to draw comparisons for lack of knowledge, 
can appreciate nothing at its just worth. She accepts love and 
ponders it. A woman is a counselor and a guide at an age 


108 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


when we love to be guided and obedience is delight ; while a 
girl would fain learn all things, meeting us with a girl’s 
naiveti instead of a woman’s tenderness. She affords a single 
triumph : with a woman there is resistance upon resistance to 
overcome ; she has but joy and tears, a woman has rapture 
and remorse. 

A girl cannot play the part of a mistress unless she is so 
corrupt that we turn from her with loathing ; a woman has a 
thousand ways of preserving her power and her dignity ; 
she has risked so much for love that she must bid him pass 
through his myriad transformations, while her too submissive 
rival gives a sense of too serene security which palls. If the 
one sacrifices her maidenly pride, the other immolates the 
honor of a whole family. A girl’s coquetry is of the simplest, 
she thinks that all is said when the veil is laid aside; a 
woman’s coquetry is endless, she shrouds herself in veil after 
veil, she satisfies every demand of man’s vanity, the novice 
responds but to one. 

And there are terrors, fears, and hesitations — trouble and 
storm in the love of a woman of thirty years, never to be 
found in a young girl’s love. At thirty years a woman asks 
her lover to give her back the esteem she has forfeited for his 
sake ; she lives only for him, her thoughts are full of his future, 
he must have a great career, she bids him make it glorious ; she 
can obey, entreat, command, humble herself, or rise in pride ; 
times without number she brings comfort when a young girl 
can only make moan. And with all the advantages of her 
position, the woman of thirty can be a girl again, for she can 
play all parts, assume a girl’s bashfulness, and grow the fairer 
even for a mischance. 

Between these two feminine types lies the immeasurable 
difference which separates the foreseen from the unforeseen, 
strength from weakness. The woman of thirty satisfies every 
requirement ; the young girl must satisfy none, under penalty 
of ceasing to be a young girl. Such ideas as these, developing 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


109 


in a young man’s mind, help to strengthen the strongest of 
all passions, a passion in which all spontaneous and natural 
feeling is blended with the artificial sentiment created by 
conventional manners. 

The most important and decisive step in a woman’s life* is 
the very one that she invariably regards as the most insignifi- 
cant. After her marriage she is no longer her own mistress, 
she is the queen and the bond-slave of the domestic hearth. 
The sanctity of womanhood is incompatible with social liberty 
and social claims; and for a woman emancipation means cor- 
ruption. If you give a stranger the right of entry into the 
sanctuary of home, do you not put yourself at his mercy? 
How then if she herself bids him enter? Is not this an 
offense, or, to speak more accurately, a first step toward an 
offense? You must either accept this theory with all its con- 
sequences, or absolve illicit passion. French society hitherto 
has chosen the third and middle course of looking on and 
laughing when offenses come, apparently upon the Spartan 
principle of condoning the theft and punishing clumsiness. 
And this system, it may be, is a very wise one. ’Tis a most 
appalling punishment to have all your neighbors pointing the 
finger of scorn at you, a punishment that a woman feels in her 
very heart. Women are tenacious, and all of them should be 
tenacious of respect ; without esteem they cannot exist, esteem 
is the first demand that they make of love. The most corrupt 
among them feels that she must, in the first place, pledge the 
future to buy absolution for the past, and strives to make her 
lover understand that only for irresistible bliss can she barter 
the respect which the world will henceforth absolutely refuse 
to her. 

Some such reflections cross the mind of any woman who for 
the first time and alone receives a visit from a young man ; 
and this especially when, like Charles de Vandenesse, the 
visitor is handsome or clever. And similarly there are not 
many young men who would fail to base some secret wish on 


110 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


one of the thousand and one ideas which justify the instinct 
that attracts them to a beautiful, witty, and unhappy woman 
like the Marquise d’Aiglemont. 

Mme. d’Aiglemont, therefore, felt troubled when M. de 
Vandenesse was announced ; and, as for him, he was almost 
confused in spite of the assurance which is like a matter of 
costume for a diplomatist. But not for long. The marquise 
took refuge at once in the friendliness of manner which women 
use as a defense against the misinterpretations of fatuity, a 
manner which admits of no afterthought, while it paves the 
way to sentiment (to make use of a figure of speech), temper- 
ing the transition through the ordinary forms of politeness. 
In this ambiguous position, where the four roads leading re- 
spectively to Indifference, Respect, Wonder, and Passion 
meet, a woman may stay as long as she pleases, but only at 
thirty years does she understand all the possibilities of the 
situation. Laughter, tenderness, and jest are all permitted to 
her at the crossing of the ways ; she has acquired the tact by 
which she finds all the responsive chords in a man’s nature, 
and skill in judging the sounds which she draws forth. Her 
silence is as dangerous as her speech. You will never read 
her at that age, nor discover if she is frank or false, nor how 
far she is serious in her admissions or merely laughing at you. 
She gives you the right to engage in a game of fence with her, 
and suddenly by a glance, a gesture of proved potency, she 
closes the combat and turns from you with your secret in her 
keeping, free to offer you up to a jest, free to interest herself 
in you, safe alike in her weakness and your strength. 

Although the Marquise d’Aiglemont took up her position 
upon this neutral ground during the first interview, she knew 
how to preserve a high womanly dignity. The sorrows of 
which she never spoke seemed to hang over her assumed 
gayety like a light cloud obscuring the sun. When Vande- 
nesse went out, after a conversation which he had enjoyed 
more than he had thought possible, he carried with him the 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


Ill 


conviction that this was like to be too costly a conquest for 
his aspirations. 

“ It would mean sentiment from here to yonder,” he 
thought, “and correspondence enough to wear out a deputy 
second-clerk on his promotion. And yet if I really cared ” 

Luckless phrase that has been the ruin of many an infatu- 
ated mortal. In France the way to love lies through self-love. 
Charles went back to Mme. d’Aiglemont, and imagined that 
she showed symptoms of pleasure in his conversation. And 
then, instead of giving himself up like a boy to the joy of 
falling in love, he tried to play a double role. He did his 
best to act passion and to keep cool enough to analyze the 
progress of this flirtation, to be lover and diplomatist at once; 
but youth and hot blood and analysis could only end in one 
way, over head and ears in love ; for, natural or artificial, the 
marquise was more than his match. Each time as he went 
out from Mme. d’Aiglemont, he strenuously held himself to 
his distrust, and submitted the progressive situations of his 
case to a rigorous scrutiny fatal to his own emotions. 

“ To-day she gave me to understand that she has been very 
unhappy and lonely,” said he to himself, after the third visit, 
“and that but for her little girl she would have longed for 
death. She was perfectly resigned. Now as I am neither 
her brother nor her spiritual director, why should she confide 
her troubles to me? She loves me.” 

Two days later he came away apostrophizing modern man- 
ners. 

“Love takes on the hue of every age. In 1822 love is a 
doctrinaire. Instead of proving love by deeds, as in times 
past, we have taken to argument and rhetoric and debate. 
Women’s tactics are reduced to three shifts. In the first 
place, they declare that we cannot love as they love. (Co- 
quetry ! the marquise simply threw it at me, like a challenge, 
this evening!) Next they grow pathetic, to appeal to our 
natural generosity or self-love ; for does it not flatter a young 


112 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


man’s vanity to console a woman for a great calamity. And, 
lastly, they have a craze for virginity. She must have thought 
that I thought her very innocent. My good faith is like to 
become an excellent speculation.” 

But a day came when every suspicious idea was exhausted. 
He asked himself whether the marquise was not sincere ; 
whether so much suffering could be feigned, and why she 
should act the part of resignation ? She lived in complete 
seclusion ; she drank in silence of a cup of sorrow scarcely 
to be guessed unless from the accent of some chance exclama- 
tion in a voice always well under control. From that moment 
Charles felt a keen interest in Mme. d’Aiglemont. And yet, 
though his visits had come to be a recognized thing, and in 
some sort a necessity to them both, and though the hour was 
kept free by tacit agreement, Yandenesse still thought that 
this woman with whom he was in love was more clever than 
sincere. “ Decidedly, she is an uncommonly clever woman,” 
he used to say to himself as he went away. 

When he came into the room, there was the marquise in 
her favorite attitude, melancholy expressed in her whole form. 
She made no movement when he entered, only raised her 
eyes and looked full at him, but the glance that she gave him 
was like a smile. Mme. d’Aiglemont’s manner meant con- 
fidence and sincere friendship, but of love there was no trace. 
Charles sat down and found nothing to say. A sensation for 
which no language exists troubled him. 

“What is the matter with you?” she asked in a softened 
voice. 

“ Nothing. Yes ; I am thinking of something of which, as 
yet, you have not thought at all.” 

“ What is it? ” 

“ Why — the Congress is over.” 

“Well,” she said, “and ought you to have been at the 
Congress ? ” 

A direct answer would have been the most eloquent and 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


113 


delicate declaration of love ; but Charles did not make it. 
Before the candid friendship in Mme. d’Aiglemont’s face all 
the calculations of vanity, the hopes of love, and the diplo- 
matist’s doubts died away. She did not suspect, or she 
seemed not to suspect, his love for her; and Charles, in utter 
confusion turning upon himself, was forced to admit that he 
had said and done nothing which could warrant such a belief 
on her part. For M. de Vandenesse that evening, the mar- 
quise was, as she had always been, simple and friendly, sincere 
in her sorrow, glad to have a friend, proud to find a nature 
responsive to her own — nothing more. It had not entered 
her mind that a woman could yield twice ; she had known 
love — love still lay bleeding in the depths of her heart, but 
she did not imagine that bliss could bring her its rapture 
twice, for she believed not merely in the intellect, but in the 
soul ; and for her love was no simple attraction ; it drew her 
with all noble attractions. 

In a moment Charles became a young man again, enthralled 
by the splendor of a nature so lofty. He wished for a fuller 
initiation into the secret history of a‘ life blighted rather by 
fate than by her own fault. Mme. d’Aiglemont heard him 
ask the cause of the overwhelming sorrow which had blended 
all the harmonies of sadness with her beauty; she gave him 
one glance, but that searching look was like a seal set upon 
some solemn compact. 

“Ask no more such questions of me,” she said. “Four 
years ago, on this very day, the man who loved me, for whom 
I would have given up everything, even my own self-respect, 
died, and died to save my name. That love was still young 
and pure and full of illusions when it came to an end. Before I 
gave way to passion — and never was w r oman so urged by fate — 
I had been drawn into the mistake that ruins many a girl’s life, 
a marriage with a man whose agreeable manners concealed his 
emptiness. Marriage plucked my hopes away one by one. 
And now, to-day, I have forfeited happiness through marriage, 
8 


114 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


as well as the happiness styled criminal, and I have known no 
happiness. Nothing is left to me. If I could not die. at the 
least I ought to be faithful to my memories.” 

No tears came with the words. Her eyes fell, and there 
was a slight twisting of the fingers interclasped, according to 
her wont. It was simply said, but in her voice there was a 
note of despair, deep as her love seemed to have been, which 
left Charles without a hope. The dreadful story of a life told 
in three sentences, with that twisting of the fingers for all 
comment, the might of anguish in a fragile woman, the dark 
depths masked by a fair face, the tears of four years of mourn- 
ing, fascinated Vandenesse ; he sat silent and diminished in 
the presence of her woman’s greatness and nobleness, seeing 
not the physical beauty so exquisite, so perfectly complete, 
but the soul so great in its power to feel. He had found, at 
last, the ideal of his fantastic imaginings, the ideal so vigor- 
ously invoked by all who look on life as the raw material of a 
passion for which many a one seeks ardently, and dies before 
he has grasped the whole of the dreamed-of treasure. 

With those words of hers in his ears, in the presence of her 
sublime beauty, his own thoughts seemed poor and narrow. 
Powerless as he felt himself to find words of his own, simple 
enough and lofty enough to scale the heights of this exaltation, 
he took refuge in platitudes as to the destiny of women. 

“ Madame, we must either forget our pain or hollow out a 
tomb for ourselves.” 

But reason always cuts a poor figure beside sentiment ; the 
one being essentially restricted, like everything that is positive, 
while the other is infinite. To set to work to reason where 
you are required to feel is the mark of a limited nature. 
Vandenesse therefore held his peace, sat awhile with his eyes 
fixed upon her, then went away. A prey to novel thoughts 
which exalted woman for him, he was in something the same 
position as a painter who has taken the vulgar studio model 
for a type of womanhood, and suddenly confronts the 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


115 


Mnemosyne of the Museum — that noblest and least appre- 
ciated of antique statues. 

Charles de Vandenesse was deeply in love. He loved Mme. 
d’Aiglemont with the loyalty of youth, with the fervor that 
communicates such ineffable charm to a first passion, with a 
Simplicity of heart of which a man only recovers some frag- 
.bents when he loves again at a later day. Delicious first 
passion of youth, almost always deliciously savored by the 
woman who calls it forth ; for at the golden prime of thirty, 
from the poetic summit of a woman’s life, she can look out 
over the whole course of love — backward into the past, for- 
ward into the future — and, knowing all the price to be paid 
for love, enjoys her bliss with the dread of losing it ever 
present with her. Her soul is still fair with her waning youth, 
and passion daily gathers strength from the dismaying pros- 
pect of the coming days. 

“ This is love,” Vandenesse said to himself this time as he 
left the marquise, “and for my misfortune I love a woman 
wedded to her memories. It is hard work to struggle against 
a dead rival, never present to make blunders and fall out of 
favor, nothing of him left but his better qualities. What is it 
but a sort of high treason against the Ideal to attempt to break 
the charm of memory, to destroy the hopes that survive a lost 
lover, precisely because he only awakened longings, and all 
that is loveliest and most enchanting in love?” 

These sober reflections, due to the discouragement and 
dread of failure with which love begins in earnest, were the 
last expiring effort of diplomatic reasoning. Thenceforward 
he knew no afterthoughts, he was the plaything of his love, 
and lost himself in the nothings of that strange inexplicable 
happiness which is full fed by a chance word, by silence, or a 
vague hope. He tried to love Platonically, came daily to 
breathe the air that she breathed, became almost a part of her 
house, and went everywhere with her, slave as he was of a 
tyrannous passion compounded of egoism and devotion of 


m 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


the completest. Love has its own instinct, finding the way to 
the heart, as the feeblest insect finds the way to its flower, 
with a will which nothing can dismay nor turn aside. If feel- 
ing is sincere, its destiny is not doubtful. Let a woman begin 
to think that her life depends on the sincerity or fervor or 
earnestness which her lover shall put into his longings, and is 
there not sufficient in the thought to put her through all the 
tortures of dread ? It is impossible for a woman, be she wife or 
mother, to be secure from a young man’s love. One thing it 
is within her power to do — to refuse to see him as soon as she 
learns a secret which she never fails to guess. But this is too 
decided a step to take at an age when marriage has become a 
prosaic and tiresome yoke, and conjugal affection is some- 
thing less than tepid (if indeed her husband has not already 
begun to neglect her). Is a woman plain ? She is flattered 
by a love which gives her fairness. Is she young and charm- 
ing ? She is only to be won by a fascination as great as her 
own power to charm ; that is to say, a fascination well-nigh 
irresistible. Is she virtuous ? There is a love sublime in its 
earthliness which leads her to find something like absolution 
in the very greatness of the surrender and glory in a hard 
struggle. Everything is a snare. No lesson, therefore, is too 
severe where the temptation is so strong. The seclusion in 
which the Greeks and Orientals kept and keep their women, 
an example more and more followed in modern England, is 
the only safeguard of domestic morality ; but under this 
system there is an end of all the charm of social intercourse ; 
and society, and good breeding, and refinement of manners 
become impossible. The nations must take their choice. 

So a few months went by, and Mme. d’Aiglemont discov- 
ered that her life was closely bound with this young man’s 
life, without overmuch confusion in her surprise, and felt with 
something almost like pleasure that she shared his tastes and 
his thoughts. Had she adopted Vandenesse’s ideas? Or was 
it Vandenesse who had made her lightest whims his own ? 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


117 


She was not careful to inquire. She had been swept out 
already into the current of passion, and yet this adorable 
woman told herself, with the confident reiteration of mis- 
giving— 

“ Ah ! no. I will be faithful to him who died for me.” 

Pascal said that “ the doubt of God implies belief in God.” 

[ And similarly it may be said that a woman only parleys when 
she has surrendered. A day came when the marquise ad- 
mitted to herself that she was loved, and wdth that admission 
came a time of wavering among countless conflicting thoughts 
and feelings. The superstitions of experience spoke their 
language. Should she be happy? Was it possible that she 
should find happiness outside the limits of the laws which 
society rightly or wrongly has set up for humanity to live by? 
Hitherto her cup of life had been full of bitterness. Was there 
any happy issue possible for the ties which united two human 
beings held apart by social conventions? And might not 
happiness be bought too dear ? Still, this so ardently desired 
happiness, for which it is so natural to seek, might perhaps be 
found after all. Curiosity is always retained on the lover’s 
side in the suit. The secret tribunal was still sitting when 
Vandenesse appeared, and his presence put the metaphysical 
spectre, reason, to flight. 

If such are the successive transformations through which a 
sentiment, transient though it be, passes in a young man and 
a woman of thirty, there comes a moment of time when the 
shades of difference blend into each other, when all reasonings 
end in a single and final reflection which is lost and absorbed 
in the desire which it confirms. Then the longer the resist- 
ance, the mightier the voice of love. And here endeth this 
lesson, or rather this study made from the ecorche , to borrow 
a most graphic term from the studio, for in this history it 
is not so much intended to portray love as to lay bare its 
mechanism and its dangers. From this moment every day 
adds color to these dry bones, clothes them again with living 


118 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


flesh and blood and the charm of youth, and puts vitality into 
their movements; till they glow once more with the beauty, 
the persuasive grace of sentiment, the loveliness of life. 

Charles found Mme. d’Aiglemont absorbed in thought, and 
to his : “ What is it ? ” spoken in thrilling tones grown persua- 
sive with the heart’s soft magic, she was careful not to reply. 
The delicious question bore witness to the perfect unity of 
their spirits; and the marquise felt, with a woman’s wonder- 
ful intuition, that to give any expression to the sorrow in her 
heart would be to make an advance. If, even now, each one 
of those words was fraught with significance for them both, 
in what fathomless depths might she not plunge at the first 
step? She read herself with a clear and lucid glance. She 
was silent, and Vandenesse followed her example. 

“ I am not feeling well,” she said at last, taking alarm at the 
pause fraught with such great moment for them both, when the 
language of the eyes completely filled the blank left by the 
helplessness of speech. 

“Madame,” said Charles, and his voice was tender but un- 
steady with strong feeling, “soul and body are both depen- 
dent on each other. If you were happy, you would be young 
and fresh. Why do you refuse to ask of love all that love has 
taken from you? You think that your life is over when it is 
only just beginning. Trust yourself to a friend’s care. It is 
so sweet to be loved.” 

“I am old already,” she said; “ there is no reason why I 
should not continue to suffer as in the past. And ‘ one must 
love,’ do you say? Well, I must not, and I cannot. Your 
friendship has put some sweetness into my life, but beside you 
I care for no one, no one could efface my memories. A friend 
I accept ; I should fly from a lover. Beside, would it be a 
very generous thing to do, to exchange a withered heart for 
a young heart ; to smile upon illusions which now \ cannot 
share, to cause happiness in which I should either have no 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


119 


belief, or tremble to lose ? I should perhaps respond to his 
devotion with egoism, should weigh and deliberate while he 
felt ; my memory would resent the poignancy of his happi- 
ness. No, if you love once, that love is never replaced, you 
see. Indeed, who would have my heart at this price?” 

There was a tinge of heartless coquetry in the words, the 
last effort of discretion. 

“ If he loses courage, well and good, I shall live alone and 
faithful.” The thought came from the very depths of the 
woman, for her it was the too slender willow twig caught in 
vain by a swimmer swept out by the current. 

Vandenesse’s involuntary shudder at her dictum pled more 
eloquently for him than all his past assiduity. Nothing moves 
a woman so much as the discovery of a gracious delicacy in 
us, such a refinement of sentiment as her own, for a woman 
the grace and delicacy are sure tokens of truth. Charles* 
start revealed the sincerity of his love. Mme. d’Aiglemont 
learned the strength of his affection from the intensity of his 
pain. 

“ Perhaps you are right,” he said coldly. “ New love, new 
vexation of spirit.” 

Then he changed the subject, and spoke of indifferent mat- 
ters ; but he was visibly moved, and he concentrated his gaze 
on Mme. d’Aiglemont as if he were seeing her for the last 
time. 

“Adieu, madame,” he said, with emotion in his voice. 

“ Au revoir ,” said she, with that subtle coquetry, the secret 
of a very few among women. 

He made no answer and went. 

When Charles was no longer there, when his empty chair 
spoke for him, regrets flocked in upon her, and she found 
fault with herself. Passion makes an immense advance as soon 
as a woman persuades herself that she has failed somewhat in 
generosity or hurt a noble nature. In love there is never any 
need to be on our guard against the worst in us ; that is a 


120 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


safeguard ; a woman only surrenders at the summons of a 
virtue. “The floor of hell is paved with good intentions,” it 
is no preacher’s paradox. 

Vandenesse stopped away for several days. Every evening 
at the accustomed hour the marquise sat expectant in remorseful 
impatience. She could not write — that would be a declara- 
tion, and, moreover, her instinct told her that he would come 
back. On the sixth day he was announced, and never had 
she heard the name with such delight. Her joy frightened 
her. 

“You have punished me well,” she said, addressing him. 

Vandenesse gazed at her in astonishment. 

“Punished!” he echoed. “And for what?” He under- 
stood her quite well, but he meant to be avenged for all that 
he had suffered as soon as she suspected it. 

“Why have you not come to see me?” she demanded 
with a smile. 

“Then have you seen no visitors?” asked he, parrying 
the question. 

“Yes. Messieurs de Ronquerolles and de Marsay and 
young d’Escrignon came and stayed for nearly two hours, 
the first two yesterday, the last this morning. And, beside, I 
have had a call, I believe, from Madame Firmiani and from 
your sister, Madame de Listomfcre.” 

Here was a new infliction, torture which none can com- 
prehend unless they know love as a fierce and all-invading 
tyrant whose mildest symptom is a monstrous jealousy, a per- 
petual desire to snatch away the beloved from every other in- 
fluence. 

“What!” thought he to himself, “she has seen visitors, 
she has been with happy creatures, and talking to them, while 
I was unhappy and all alone ! ” 

He buried his annoyance forthwith, and consigned love to 
the depths of his heart, like a coffin to the sea. His thoughts 
were of the kind that never find expression in words \ they 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


121 


pass through the mind swiftly as a deadly acid, that poisons 
as it evaporates and vanishes. His brow, however, was over- 
clouded ; and Mme. d’Aiglemont, guided by her woman’s 
instinct, shared his sadness without understanding it. She 
had hurt him, unwittingly, as Vandenesse knew. He talked 
over his position with her, as if his jealousy were one of 
those hypothetical cases which lovers love to discuss. Then 
the marquise understood it all. She was so deeply moved 
that she could not keep back the tears — and so these lovers 
entered the heaven of love. 

Heaven and hell are two great imaginative conceptions 
formulating our ideas of joy and sorrow — those two poles 
about which human existence revolves. Is not heaven a 
figure of speech covering now and for evermore an infinity of 
human feeling impossible to express save in its accidents — 
since that joy is one ? And what is hell but the symbol of 
our infinite power to suffer tortures so diverse that of our pain 
it is possible to fashion works of art, for no two human sor- 
rows are alike ? 

One evening the two lovers sat alone and side by side, 
silently watching one of the fairest transformations of the sky, 
a cloudless heaven taking hues of pale gold and purple from 
the last rays of the sunset. With the slow fading of the day- 
light, sweet thoughts seem to awaken, and soft stirrings of 
passion and a mysterious sense of trouble in the midst of calm. 
Nature sets before us vague images of bliss, bidding us enjoy 
the happiness within our reach, or lament it when it has fled. 
In those moments fraught with enchantment, when the tender 
light in the canopy of the sky blends in harmony with the 
spells working within, it is difficult to resist the heart’s desires 
grown so magically potent. Cares are blunted ; joy becomes 
ecstasy; pain, intolerable anguish. The pomp of sunset gives 
the signal for confessions and draws them forth. Silence 
grows more dangerous than speech, for it gives to eyes all the 
power of the infinite of the heavens reflected in them. And 

E 


122 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


for speech, the least word has irresistible might. Is not the 
light infused into the voice and purple into the glances? Is 
not heaven within us, or do we feel that we are in the 
heavens ? 

Vandenesse and Julie — for so she had allowed herself to be 
called for the past few days by him whom she loved to speak 
of as Charles — Vandenesse and Julie were talking together, 
but they had drifted very far from their original subject ; and 
if their spoken words had grown meaningless, they listened in 
delight to the unspoken thoughts that lurked in the sounds. 
Her hand lay in his. She had abandoned it to him without 
a thought that she had granted a proof of love. 

Together they leaned forward to look out upon a majestic 
cloud country, full of snows and glaciers and fantastic moun- 
tain peaks with gray stains of shadow on their sides, a picture 
composed of sharp contrasts between fiery red and the shadows 
of darkness, filling the skies with a fleeting vision of glory 
which cannot be reproduced — magnificent swaddling-bands 
of sunrise, bright shrouds of the dying sun. As they leant, 
Julie’s hair brushed lightly against Vandenesse’s cheek. She 
felt that light contact, and shuddered violently, and he even 
more, for imperceptibly they both had reached one of those in- 
explicable crises when quiet has wrought upon the senses until 
every faculty of perception is so keen that the slightest shock 
fills the heart lost in melancholy with sadness that overflows in 
tears ; or raises joy to ecstasy in a heart that is lost in the ver- 
tigo of love. Almost involuntarily Julie pressed her lover’s 
hand. That wooing pressure gave courage to his timidity. 
All the joy of the present, all the hopes of the future were 
blended in the emotion of a first caress, the bashful trembling 
kiss that Mme. d’Aiglemont received upon her cheek. The 
slighter the concession, the more dangerous and insinuating it 
was. For their double misfortune it was only too sincere a 
revelation. Two noble natures had met and blended,* drawn 
* MSler6. 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


123 


each to each by every law of natural attraction, held apart by 
every ordinance. 

General d’Aiglemont came in at that very moment. 

“The Ministry has gone out,” he said. “Your uncle will 
be in the new cabinet. So you stand an uncommonly good 
chance of an embassy, Vandenesse.” 

Charles and Julie looked at each other and flushed red. 
That blush was one more tie to unite them ; there was one 
thought and one remorse in either mind ; between two lovers 
guilty of a kiss there is a bond quite as strong and terrible 
as the bond between two robbers who have murdered a man. 
Something had to be said by way of reply. 

“I do not care to leave Paris now,” Charles said. 

“ We know why,” said the general, with the knowing air of 
a man who discovers a secret. “ You do not like to leave 
your uncle, because you do not wish to lose your chance of 
succeeding to the title.” 

The marquise took refuge in her room, and in her mind 
passed a pitiless verdict upon her husband. 

“ His stupidity is really beyond anything ! ” 



IV. 


THE FINGER OF GOD. 

Between the Barriere d’ltalie and the Barriere de la Sant6, 
along the boulevard which leads to the Jardin des Plantes, you 
have a view of Paris fit to send an artist or the tourist, the 
most blast in matters of landscape, into ecstasies. Reach the 
slightly higher ground where the line of boulevard, shaded by 
tall, thick-spreading trees, curves with the grace of some green 
and silent forest avenue, and you see spread out at your feet a 
deep valley populous with factories looking almost countrified 
among green trees and the brown streams of the Bievre or the 
Gobelins. 

On the opposite slope, beneath some thousands of roofs 
packed close together like heads in a crowd, lurks the squalor 
of the Faubourg Saint-Marceau. The imposing cupola of the 
Pantheon and the grim melancholy dome of the Val-du- 
Grace tower proudly up above a whole town in itself, built 
amphitheatre-wise; every tier being grotesquely represented 
by a crooked line of street, so that the two public monuments 
look like a huge pair of giants dwarfing into insignificance the 
poor little houses and the tallest poplars in the valley. To 
your left behold the observatory, the daylight, pouring athwart 
its windows and galleries, producing such fantastical, strange 
effects that the building looks like a black spectral skeleton. 
Farther yet in the distance rises the elegant lantern tower of 
the Invalides, soaring up between the bluish pile of the Lux- 
embourg and the gray towers of Saint-Sulpice. From this 
standpoint the lines of the architecture are blended with green 
leaves and gray shadows, and change every moment with every 
aspect of the heavens, every alteration of light or color in the 
sky. Afar, the skyey spaces themselves seem to be full of 
( 124 ) 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


125 


buildings; near, wind the serpentine curves of waving trees 
and green footpaths. 

Away to your right, through a great gap in this singular 
landscape, you see the canal Saint-Martin, a long pale stripe 
with its edging of reddish stone quays and fringes of lime 
avenues. The long rows of buildings beside it, in genuine 
Roman style, are the public granaries. 

Beyond, again, on the very last plane of all, see the smoke- 
dimmed slopes of Belleville, covered with houses and wind- 
mills, which blend their freaks of outline with the chance 
effects of clouds. And still, between that horizon, vague as 
some childish recollection, and the serried range of roofs in 
the valley, a whole city lies out of sight.: a huge city, ingulfed, 
as it were, in a vast hollow between the pinnacles of the 
Hopital de la Pitie and the ridge line of the Cimetiere de 
l’Est, between suffering on the one hand and death on the 
other; a city sending up a smothered roar like ocean grurm 
bling at the foot of a cliff, as if to let you know that “ I am 
here ! ” 

When the sunlight pours like a flood over this strip of Paris, 
purifying and etherealizing the outlines, kindling answering 
lights here and there in the window-panes, brightening the red 
tiles, flaming about the golden crosses, whitening walls and 
transforming the atmosphere into a gauzy veil, calling up rich 
contrasts of light and fantastic shadow ; when the sky is blue 
and earth quivers in the heat, and the bells are pealing, then 
you shall see one of the eloquent fairy scenes which stamp 
themselves for ever on the imagination, a scene that shall find 
as fanatical worshipers as the wondrous views of Naples and 
Byzantium or the isles of Florida. Nothing is wanting to 
complete the harmony, the murmur of the world of men and 
the idyllic quiet of solitude, the voices of a million human 
creatures and the voice of God. There lies a whole capital 
beneath the peaceful cypresses of P£re-Lachaise cemetery. 

The landscape lay in all its beauty, sparkling in the spring 


126 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


sunlight, as I stood looking out over it one morning, my back 
against a huge elm-tree that flung its yellow flowers to the 
wind. And, at the sight of the rich and glorious view before 
me, I thought bitterly of the scorn with which even in our 
literature we affect to hold this land of ours, and poured male- 
dictions on the pitiable plutocrats who fall out of love with fair 
France, and spend their gold to acquire the right of sneering 
at their own country, by going through Italy at a gallop and 
inspecting that desecrated land through an opera-glass. I 
cast loving eyes on modern Paris ; I was beginning to dream 
dreams, when the sound of a kiss disturbed the solitude and 
put philosophy to flight. Down the sidewalk, along the steep 
bank, above the rippling water, I saw beyond the Pont des 
Gobelins the figure of a woman, dressed with the daintiest 
simplicity ; she was still young, as it seemed to me, and the 
blithe gladness of the landscape was reflected in her sweet 
face. Her companion, a handsome young man, had just set 
down a little boy. A prettier child has never been seen, and 
to this day I do not know whether it was the little one or his 
mother who received the kiss. In their young faces, in their 
eyes, their smile, their every movement, you could read the 
same deep and tender thought. Their arms were interlaced 
with such glad swiftness; they drew close together with such 
marvelous unanimity of impulse that, conscious of nothing but 
themselves, they did not so much as see me. A second child, 
however — a little girl, who had turned her back upon them in 
sullen discontent — threw me a glance, and the expression of 
her eyes startled me. She was as pretty and as engaging as 
the little brother whom she left to run about by himself, some- 
times before, sometimes after their mother and her companion ; 
but her charm was less childless, and now, as she stood mute 
and motionless, her attitude and demeanor suggested a torpid 
snake. There was something indescribably mechanical in the 
way in which the pretty woman and her companion paced up 
and down. In absence of mind, probably, they were content 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


127 


to walk to and fro between the little bridge and a carriage 
that stood waiting near by at a corner in the boulevard, turn- 
ing, stopping short now and again, looking into each other’s 
eyes, or breaking into laughter as their casual talk grew lively 
or languid, grave or gay. 

I watched this delicious picture a while from my hiding- 
place by the great elm-tree, and should have turned away no 
doubt and respected their privacy, if it had not been for a 
chance discovery. In the face of the brooding, silent, elder 
child I saw traces of thought over-deep for her age. When 
her mother and the young man at her side turned and came 
near, her head was frequently lowered ; the furtive sidelong 
glances of intelligence that she gave the pair and the child 
her brother were nothing less than extraordinary. Sometimes 
the pretty woman or her friend would stroke the little boy’s 
fair curls, or lay a caressing finger against the baby throat or 
the white collar as he played at keeping step with them ; and 
no words can describe the shrewd subtlety, the ingenuous 
malice, the fierce intensity which lighted up that pallid little 
face with the faint circles already round the eyes. Truly 
there was a man’s power of passion in that strange-looking, 
delicate little girl. Here were traces of suffering or of 
thought in her; and which is the more certain token of death 
when life is in blossom — physical suffering, or the malady of 
too early thought preying upon a soul as yet in bud ? Perhaps 
a mother knows For my own part, I know of nothing more 
dreadful to see than an old man’s thoughts on a child’s fore- 
head ; even blasphemy from girlish lips is less monstrous. 

The almost stupid stolidity of this child who had begun to 
think already, her rare gestures, everything about her, inter- 
ested me. I scrutinized her curiously. Then the common 
whim of the observer drew me to compare her with her 
brother, and to note their likeness and unlikeness. 

Her brown hair and dark eyes and look of precocious 
power made a rich contrast with the little one’s fair curled 


128 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


head and sea-green eyes and winning helplessness. She, per- 
haps, was seven or eight years of age ; the boy was full four 
years younger. Both children were dressed alike ; but here 
again, looking closely, I noticed a difference. It was very 
slight, a little thing enough ; but in the light of after-events 
I saw that it meant a whole romance in the past, a whole 
tragedy to come. The little brown-haired maid wore a linen 
collar with a plain hem, her brother’s was edged with dainty 
embroidery, that was all ; but therein lay the confession of a 
heart’s secret, a tacit preference which a child can read in 
the mother’s inmost soul as clearly as if the spirit of God re- 
vealed it. The fair-haired child, careless and glad, looked 
almost like a girl, his skin was so fair and fresh, his move- 
ments so graceful, his look so sweet ; while his older sister, in 
spite of her energy, in spite of the beauty of her features and 
her dazzling complexion, looked like a sickly little boy. In 
her bright eyes there was none of the humid softness which 
lends such charm to children’s faces; they seemed, like 
courtiers’ eyes, to be dried by some inner fire ; and in her 
pallor there was a certain swarthy olive tint, the sign of vigor- 
ous character. Twice her little brother came to her, holding 
out a tiny hunting-horn with a touching charm, a winning 
look, and wistful expression, which would have sent Charlet 
into ecstasies, but she only scowled in answer to his “ Here, 
Helene, will you take it ? ” so persuasively spoken. The little 
girl, so sombre and vehement beneath her apparent indiffer- 
ence, shuddered and even flushed red when her brother came 
near her; but the little one seemed not to notice his sister’s 
dark mood, and his unconsciousness, blended with earnest- 
ness, marked a final difference in character between the child 
and the little girl, whose brow was overclouded already by 
the gloom of a man’s knowledge and cares. 

“ Mamma, Helene will not play,” cried the little one, seiz- 
ing an opportunity to complain while the two stood silent on 
the Pont des Gobelins. 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


129 


“ Let her alone, Charles; you know very well that she is 
always cross.’ ’ 

Tears sprang to Helene’s eyes at the words so thoughtlessly 
uttered by her mother as she turned abruptly to the young 
man by her side. The child devoured the speech in silence, 
but she gave her brother one of those sagacious looks that 
seemed inexplicable to me, glancing with a sinister expression 
from the bank where he stood to the Bievre,* then at the bridge 
and the view, and then at me. 

I was afraid lest my presence should disturb the happy 
couple ; I slipped away and took refuge behind a thicket of 
alder trees, which completely screened me from all eyes. 
Sitting quietly on the summit of the bank, I watched the ever- 
changing landscape and the fierce-looking little girl, for with 
my head almost on a level with the boulevard I could still see 
her through the leaves. Helene, seemed uneasy over my dis- 
appearance, her dark eyes looked for me down the alley and 
behind the trees with indefinable curiosity. What was I to 
her? Then Charles’ baby laughter rang out like a bird’s song 
in the silence. The tall, young man, with the same fair hair, 
was dancing him in his arms, showering kisses upon him, and 
the meaningless baby words of that “little language” which 
rises to our lips when we play with children. The mother 
looked on smiling, now and then, doubtless, putting in some 
low word that came up from the heart, for her companion 
would stop short in his full happiness, and the blue eyes that 
turned toward her were full of glowing light and love and 
worship. Their voices, blending with the child’s voice, 
reached me with a vague sense of a caress. The three figures, 
charming in themselves, composed a lovely scene in a glorious 
landscape, filling it with a pervasive unimaginable grace. A 
delicately fair woman, radiant with smiles, a child of love, a 
young man with the irresistible charm of youth, a cloudless 
sky; nothing was wanting in nature to complete a perfect har- 
* This river was noted lor its beavers, hence the name. 


9 


130 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


mony for the delight of the soul. I found myself smiling as 
if their happiness had been my own. 

The clocks struck nine. The young man gave a tender em- 
brace to his companion, and went toward the tilbury which an 
old servant drove slowly to meet him. The lady had grown 
grave and almost sad. The child’s prattle sounded unchecked 
through the last farewell kisses. Then the tilbury rolled away, 
and the lady stood motionless, listening to the sound of the 
wheels, watching the little cloud of dust raised by its passage 
along the road. Charles ran down the green pathway back 
to the bridge to join his sister. I heard his silver voice call- 
ing to her. 

“ Why did you not come to say good-by to my good 
friend?” cried he. 

Helene looked up. Never, surely, did such hatred gleam 
from a child’s eyes as from hers at that moment when she 
turned them on the brother who stood beside her on the bank 
side. She gave him an angry push. Charles lost his footing 
on the steep slope, stumbled over the roots of a tree, and fell 
headlong forward, dashing his forehead on the sharp-edged 
stones of the embankment, and, covered with blood, dis- 
appeared over the edge into the muddy river. The turbid 
water closed over a fair, bright head with a shower of splashes; 
one sharp shriek after another rang in my ears ; then the sounds 
were stifled by the thick stream, and the poor child sank with 
a dull sound as if a stone had been thrown into the water. 
The accident had happened with more than lightning swift- 
ness. I sprang down the footpath, and Helene, stupefied with 
horror, shrieked again and again — 

‘ ‘ Mamma ! mamma ! ’ ’ 

The mother was there at my side. She had flown to the 
spot like a bird. But neither a mother’s eyes nor mine could 
find the exact place where the little one had gone under. 
There was a wide space of black hurrying water, and below in 
the bed of the Bievre ten feet of mud. There was not the 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


131 


smallest possibility of saving the child. No one is stirring at 
that hour on a Sunday morning, and there are neither barges 
nor anglers on the Bievre. There was not a creature in sight, 
not a pole to plumb the filthy stream. What need was there for 
me to explain how the ugly-looking accident had happened — 
accident or misfortune, whichever it might be? Had Helene 
avenged her father ? Her jealousy surely was the sword of 
God. And yet when I looked at the mother I shivered. 
What fearful ordeal awaited her when she should return to her 
husband, the judge before whom she must stand all her days? 
And here with her was an inseparable, incorruptible witness. 
A child’s forehead is transparent, a child’s face hides no 
thoughts, and a lie, like a red flame set within, glows out in 
red that colors even the eyes. But the unhappy woman had 
not thought as yet of the punishment awaiting her at home; 
she was staring into the Bievre. 

Such an event must inevitably send ghastly echoes through 
a woman’s life, and here is one of the most terrible of the re- 
verberations that troubled Julie’s love from time to time. 

Several years had gone by. The Marquis de Vandenesse 
wore mourning for his father and succeeded to his estates. 
One evening, therefore, after dinner it happened that a notary 
was present in his house. This was no pettifogging lawyer 
after Sterne’s pattern, but a very solid, substantial notary of 
Paris, one of your estimable men who do a stupid thing 
pompously, set down a foot heavily upon your private corn, 
and then ask what in the world there is to cry out about ? If, 
by accident, they come to know the full extent of the enor- 
mity : “ Upon my word,” cry they, “I hadn’t a notion!” 
This was a well-intentioned ass, in short, who could see 
nothing in life but deeds and documents. 

Mme. d’Aiglemont had been dining with M. de Van- 
denesse ; her husband had excused himself before dinner was 
over, for he was taking his two children to the play. They 


132 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


were to go to some boulevard theatre or other, to the Ambigu- 
Comique or the Gaiete, sensational melodrama being judged 
harmless here in Paris, and suitable pabulum for childhood, 
because innocence is always triumphant in the fifth act. The 
boy and girl had teased their father to be there before the 
curtain rose, so he had left the table before dessert was 
served. 

But the notary, the imperturbable notary, utterly incapable 
of asking himself why Mme. d’ Aiglemont should have allowed 
her husband and children to go without her to the play, sat 
on as if he were screwed to his chair. Dinner was over, des- 
sert had been prolonged by discussion, and coffee delayed. 
All these things consumed time, doubtless precious, and drew 
impatient movements from that charming woman ; she looked 
not unlike a thorough-bred pawing the ground before a race; 
but the man of law, to whom horses and women were equally 
unknown quantities, simply thought the marquise a very lively 
and sparkling personage. So enchanted was he to be in the 
company of a woman of fashion and a political celebrity, that 
he was exerting himself to shine in conversation, and, taking 
the lady’s forced smile for approbation, talked on with unflag- 
ging spirit, till the marquise was almost out of patience. 

The master of the house, in concert with the lady, had 
more than once maintained an eloquent silence when the 
lawyer expected a civil reply ; but these significant pauses 
were employed by the talkative nuisance in looking for anec- 
dotes in the fire. M. de Vandenesse had recourse to his watch ; 
the charming marquise tried the experiment of fastening her 
bonnet strings, and made as if she would go. But she did 
not go, and the notary, blind and deaf, and delighted with 
himself, was quite convinced that his interesting conversa- 
tional powers were sufficient to keep the lady on the spot. 

“I shall certainly have that woman for a client,” said he 
to himself. 

Meanwhile the marquise stood, putting on her gloves, 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


133 


twisting her fingers, looking from the equally impatient 
Marquis de Vandenesse to the lawyer, still pounding away. 
At every pause in the worthy man’s fire of witticisms the 
charming pair heaved a sigh of relief, and their looks said 
plainly, “ At last ! He is really going ! ” 

Nothing of the kind. It was a nightmare which could only 
end in exasperating the two impassioned creatures, on whom 
the lawyer had something of the fascinating effect of a snake 
on a pair of birds ; before long they would be driven to cut 
him short. 

The clever notary was giving them the history of the dis- 
creditable ways in which one du Tillet (a stockbroker then 
much in favor) had laid the foundations of his fortune ; all the 
ins and outs of the whole disgraceful business were accurately 
put before them ; and the narrator was in the very middle of 
his tale when M. de Vandenesse heard the clock strike nine. 
Then it became clear to him that his legal adviser was very 
emphatically an idiot who must be sent forthwith about his 
business. He stopped him resolutely with a gesture. 

“The tongs, my lord marquis?” queried the notary, 
handing the object in question to his client. 

“ No, monsieur, I am compelled to send you away. Mme. 
d’Aiglemont wishes to join her children, and I shall have the 
honor of escorting her.” 

“ Nine o’clock already ! Time goes like a shadow in 
pleasant company,” said the man of law, who had talked on 
end for the past hour. 

He looked for his hat, planted himself before the fire, with 
a suppressed hiccough ; and, without heeding the marquise’s 
withering glances, spoke once more to his impatient client — • 

“ To sum up, my lord marquis. Business before all things. 
To-morrow, then, we must subpoena your brother ; we will 
proceed to make out the inventory, and faith, after that ” 

So ill had the lawyer understood his instructions that his 
impression was the exact opposite to the one intended. It 


134 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


was a delicate matter, and Vandenesse, in spite of himself, 
began to put the thick-headed notary right. The discussion 
which followed took up a certain amount of time. 

“Listen,” the diplomatist said at last at a sign from the 
lady, “ you are puzzling my brains; come back to-morrow at 
nine o’clock, and bring my attorney with you.” 

“But, as I have the honor of observing, my lord marquis, 
we are not certain of finding Monsieur Desroches to-morrow, 
and if the writ is not issued by noon to-morrow, the days of 
grace will expire, and then ” 

As he spoke, a carriage entered the courtyard. The poor 
woman turned sharply away at the sound to hide the tears in 
her eyes. The marquis rang to give the servant orders to say 
that he was not at home ; but before the footman could answer 
the bell, the lady’s husband reappeared. He had returned 
unexpectedly from the Gaiete, and held both children by the 
hand. The little girl’s eyes were red; the boy was fretful 
and very cross. 

“What can have happened? ” asked the marquise. 

“ I will tell you by-and-by,” said the general, and, catching 
a glimpse through an open door of newspapers on the table 
in the adjoining sitting-room, he went off. The marquise, at 
the end of her patience, flung herself down on the sofa in des- 
peration. The notary, thinking it incumbent upon him to 
be amiable with the children, spoke to the little boy in an in- 
sinuating tone — 

“Well, my little man, and what is there on at the theatre?” 

“ ‘ The Valley of the Torrent,’ ” said Gustave sulkily. 

“Upon my word and honor,” declared the notary, “au- 
thors nowadays are half crazy. c The Valley of the Torrent ! ’ 
Why not the Torrent of the Valley? It is conceivable that a 
valley might be without a torrent in it ; now if they had said 
the Torrent of the Valley, that would have been something 
clear, something precise, something definite and comprehen- 
sible. But never mind that. Now, how is a drama to take 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


135 


place in a torrent and in a valley? You will tell me that in 
these days the principal attraction lies in the scenic effect, 
and the title is a capital advertisement. And did you enjoy 
it, my little friend?” he continued, sitting down before the 
child. 

When the notary pursued his inquiries as to the possibilities 
of a drama in the bed of a torrent, the little girl turned slowly 
away and began to cry. Her mother did not notice this in 
her intense annoyance. 

“Oh! yes, monsieur, I enjoyed it very much,” said the 
child. “ There was a dear little boy in the play, and he was 
all alone in the world, because his papa could not have been 
his real papa. And when he came to the top of the bridge 
over the torrent, a big, naughty man with a beard, dressed all 
in black, came and threw him into the water. And then 
Helene began to sob and cry, and everybody scolded us, and 
father brought us away quick, quick ” 

M. de Vandenesse and the marquise looked on in dull 
amazement, as if all power to think or move had been sud- 
denly paralyzed. 

“ Do be quiet, Gustave ! ” cried the general. “ I told you 
that you were not to talk about anything that happened at 
the play, and you have forgotten what I said already.” 

“Oh, my lord marquis, your lordship must excuse him,” 
cried the notary. “ I ought not to have asked questions, but 
I had no idea ” 

“ He ought not to have answered them,” said the general, 
looking sternly at the child. 

It seemed that the marquise and the master of the house 
both perfectly understood why the children had come back so 
suddenly. Mme. d’Aiglemont looked at her daughter, and 
rose as if to go to her, but a terrible convulsion passed over 
her face, and all that could be read in it was relentless severity. 

“That will do, Helene,” she said. “Go into the other 
room, and leave off crying.” 


136 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


“ What can she have done, poor child? ” asked the notary, 
thinking to appease the mother’s anger and to stop Helene’s 
tears at one stroke. “ So pretty as she is, she must be as good 
as can be ; never anything but a joy to her mother, I will be 
bound. Isn’t that so, my little girl?” 

Helene cowered, looked at her mother, dried her eyes, 
struggled for composure, and took refuge in the next room. 

“ And you, madame, are too good a mother not to love all 
your children alike. You are too good a woman, beside, to 
have any of those lamentable preferences which have such fatal 
effects, as we lawyers have only too much reason to know. 
Society goes through our hands ; we see its passions in that 
most revolting form — greed. Here it is the mother of a 
family trying to disinherit her husband’s children to enrich 
the others whom she loves better ; or it is the husband who 
tries to leave all his property to the child who has done his 
best to earn his mother’s hatred. And then begin quarrels, 
and fears, and deeds, and defeasances, and sham sales, and 
trusts, and all the rest of it — a pretty mess ; in fact, it is piti- 
able, upon my honor pitiable ! There are fathers that will 
spend their whole lives in cheating their children and robbing 
their wives. Yes, robbing is the only word for it. We were 
talking of tragedy ; oh ! I can assure you of this, that if we 
were at liberty to tell the real reasons of some donations that 
I know of, our modern dramatists would have the material for 
some sensational bourgeois dramas. How the wife manages to 
get her way, as she invariably does, I cannot think ; for, in 
spite of appearances and in spite of their weakness, it is al- 
ways the women who carry the day. Ah ! by the way, they 
don’t take me in. I always know the reason at the bottom of 
those predilections which the world politely styles * unaccount- 
able.’ But in justice to the husbands, I must say that they 
never discover anything. You will tell me that this is a mer- 
ciful dispens ” 

Helene had come back to the drawing-room with her father. 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


137 


and was listening attentively. So well did she understand all 
that was said that she gave her mother a frightened glance, 
feeling, with a child’s quick instinct, that these remarks would 
aggravate the punishment hanging over her. The marquise 
turned her white face to Vandenesse ; and, with terror in her 
eyes, indicated her husband, who stood with his eyes fixed 
absently on the flower pattern of the carpet. The diploma- 
tist, accomplished man of the world though he was, could no 
longer contain his wrath, he gave the man of law a withering 
glance. 

“ Step this way, sir,” he said, and he went hurriedly to the 
door of the antechamber ; the notary left his sentence half 
finished, and followed, quaking, and the husband and wife 
were left together. 

“ Now, sir,” said the Marquis de Vandenesse — he banged 
the drawing-room door and spoke with concentrated rage — 
“ ever since dinner you have done nothing but make blunders 
and talk folly. For heaven’s sake, go. You will make the 
most frightful mischief before you have done. If you are a 
clever man in your profession, keep to your profession ; and 
if by any chance you should go into society, endeavor to be 
more circumspect.” 

With that he went back to the drawing-room, and did not 
even wish the notary good-evening. For a moment that 
worthy stood dumfounded, bewildered, utterly at a loss. 
Then, when the buzzing in his ears subsided, he thought he 
heard some one moaning in the next room. Footsteps came 
and went, and bells were violently rung. He was by no 
means anxious to meet the marquis again, and found the use 
of his legs to make good his escape, only to run against a 
hurrying crowd of servants at the door. 

f ( Just the way with all these grand folk,” said he to him- 
self outside in the street as he looked about for a cab. 
“They lead you on to talk with compliments, and you think 
you are amusing them. Not a bit of it. They treat you in- 


138 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


solently ; put you at a distance ; even put you out at the door 
without scruple. After all, I talked very cleverly, I said 
nothing but what was sensible, well turned, and discreet ; and, 
upon my word, he advises me to be more circumspect in 
future. I will take good care of that ! Eh ! the mischief 
take it ! I am a notary and a member of my chamber ! 
Pshaw ! it was an ambassador’s fit of temper, nothing is 
sacred for people of that kind. To-morrow he shall explain 
what he meant by saying that I had done nothing but blunder 
and talk nonsense in his house. I will ask him for an expla- 
nation — that is, I will ask him to explain my mistake. After 

all is done and said, I am in the wrong perhaps Upon 

my word, it is very good of me to cudgel my brains like this. 
What business is it of mine?” 

So the notary went home and laid the enigma before his 
spouse, with a complete account of the evening’s events re- 
lated in sequence. 

And she replied : “My dear Crottat, his excellency was per- 
fectly right when he said that you had done nothing but 
blunder and talk folly.” 

“Why?” 

“ My dear, if I told you why, it would not prevent you 
from doing the same thing somewhere else to-morrow. I tell 
you again — talk of nothing but business when you go out; 
that is my advice to you.” 

“If you will not tell me, I shall ask him to-morrow.” 

“ Why, dear me ! the veriest noodle is careful to hide a 
thing of that kind, and do you suppose that an ambassador 
will tell you about it? Really, Crottat, I have never known 
you so utterly devoid of commonsense.” 

“ Thank you, my dear.” 


TWO MEETINGS. 


One of Napoleon’s orderly staff- officers, who shall be known 
in this history only as the general or the marquis, had come 
to spend the spring at Versailles. He had made a large fortune 
under the Restoration ; and, as his place at Court would not 
allow him to go very far from Paris, he had taken a country 
house between the church and the barrier of Montreuil, on the 
road that leads to the Avenue de Saint-Cloud. 

The house had been built originally as a retreat for the short- 
lived loves of some great lord. The grounds were large ; the gar- 
dens on either side extending from the first houses of Montreuil 
to the thatched cottages near the barrier, so that the owner 
could enjoy all the pleasures of solitude with the city almost 
at his gates. By an odd piece of contradiction, the whole 
front oi the house itself, with the principal entrance, gave 
directly upon the street. Perhaps in time past it was a toler- 
ably lonely road, and indeed this theory looks all the more 
probable when one comes to think ot it ; for not so very far 
away, on this same road, Louis Quinze built a delicious summer 
villa for Mile, de Romans, and the curious in such things 
will discover that the wayside casinos (summer-houses) are 
adorned in a style that recalls traditions of the ingenious 
taste displayed in debauchery by our ancestors who, with all 
the license laid to their charge, sought to invest it with secrecy 
and mystery. 

One winter evening the family were by themselves in the 
lonely house. The servants had received permission to go to 
Versailles to celebrate the wedding of one of their number. 
It was Christmas-time, and the holiday makers, presuming 
upon the double festival, did not scruple to outstay their leave 

039) 


140 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY . 


of absence ; yet, as the general was well known to be a man 
of his word, the culprits felt some twinges of conscience as 
they danced on after the hour of return. The clocks struck 
eleven, and still there was no sign of the servants. 

A deep silence prevailed over the countryside, broken only 
by the sound of the northeast wind whistling through the black 
branches, wailing about the house, dying in gusts along the 
corridors. The hard frost had purified the air, and held the 
earth in its grip ; the roads gave back every sound with the 
hard metallic ring which always strikes us with a new surprise ; 
the heavy footsteps of some belated reveler, or a cab returning 
to Paris, could be heard for a long distance with unwonted 
distinctness. Out in the courtyard a few dead leaves set 
a-dancing by some eddying gust found a voice for the night 
which fain had been silent. It was, in fact, one of those 
sharp, frosty evenings that wring barren expressions of pity 
from our selfish ease for wayfarers and the poor, and fills us 
with a luxurious sense of the comfort of the fireside. 

But the family party in the salon at that hour gave not a 
thought to absent servants nor houseless folk, nor to the 
gracious charm with which a winter evening sparkles. No 
one played the philosopher out of season. Secure in the pro- 
tection of an old soldier, women and children gave themselves 
up to the joys of home life, so delicious when there is no re- 
straint upon feeling; and talk and play and glances are bright 
with frankness and affection. 

The general sat, or more properly speaking, lay buried, in 
the depths of a huge, high-back armchair by the hearth. The 
heaped-up fire burnt scorchingly clear with the excessive cold 
of the night. The good father leaned his head slightly to 
one side against the back of the chair, in the indolence of 
perfect serenity and a glow of happiness. The languid, half- 
sleepy droop of his outstretched arms seemed to complete his 
expression of placid content. He was watching his youngest, 
51 boy of five or thereabout, who, half-clad as he was, declined 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


141 


to allow his mother to undress him. The little one fled from 
the night-gown and cap with which he was threatened now 
and again, and stoutly declined to part with his embroidered 
collar, laughing when his mother called to him, for he saw 
that she, too, was laughing at this declaration of infant inde- 
pendence. The next step was to go back to a game of romps 
with his sister. She was as much a child as he, but more mis- 
chievous ; and she was older by two years, and could speak 
distinctly already, whereas his inarticulate words and confused 
ideas were a puzzle even to his parents. Little Mo’ina’s play- 
fulness, somewhat coquettish already, provoked inextinguish- 
able laughter, explosions of merriment which went off like 
fireworks for no apparent cause. As they tumbled about be- 
fore the fire, unconcernedly displaying little plump bodies 
and delicate white contours, as the dark and golden curls 
mingled in a collision of rosy cheeks dimpled with childish 
glee, a father surely, a mother most certainly, must have under- 
stood those little souls, and seen the character and power of 
passion already developed before their eyes. As the cherubs 
frolicked about, struggling, rolling, and tumbling without fear 
of hurt on the soft carpet, its flowers looked pale beside the 
glowing white and red of their cheeks and the brilliant color 
of their shining eyes. 

On the sofa by the fire, opposite the great armchair, the 
children’s mother sat among a heap of scattered garments, 
with a little scarlet shoe in her hand. She seerped to have 
given herself up completely to the enjoyment of the moment ; 
waverirfg discipline had relaxed into a sweet smile engraved 
upon her lips. At the age of six-and-thirty, or thereabout, 
she was a beautiful woman still, by reason of the rare perfec- 
tion of the outlines of her face, and at this moment light and 
warmth and happiness filled it with preternatural brightness. 

Again and again her eyes wandered from her children, and 
their tender gaze was turned upon her husband’s grave face; 


142 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


and now and again the eyes of husband and wife met with a 
silent exchange of happiness and thoughts from some inner 
depth. 

The general’s face was deeply bronzed, a stray lock of gray 
hair scored shadows on his forehead. The reckless courage 
of the battlefield could be read in the lines carved in his hol- 
low cheeks, and gleams of rugged strength in the blue eyes ; 
clearly the bit of red ribbon flaunting at his button-hole had 
been paid for by hardship and toil. An inexpressible kindli- 
ness and frankness shone out of the strong, resolute face which 
reflected his children’s merriment; the gray-haired captain 
found it not so very hard to become a child again. Is there 
not always a love of little children in the heart of a soldier 
who has seen enough of the seamy-side of life to know some- 
thing of the piteous limitations of strength and the privileges 
of weakness ? 

At a round table rather’ farther away, in a circle of bright 
lamplight that dimmed the feebler illumination of the wax 
candles on the mantel, sat a boy of thirteen, rapidly turning 
the pages of a thick volume which he was reading, undisturbed 
by the shouts of the children. There was a boy’s curiosity in 
his face. From his lyceens uniform he was evidently a school- 
boy, and the book he was reading was the “Arabian Nights.” 
Small wonder that he was deeply absorbed. He sat perfectly 
still in a meditative attitude, with an elbow on the table, and 
his hand propping his head — the white fingers contrasting 
strongly with the brown hair into which they were thrust. 
As he sat, with the light turned full upon his face, and the 
rest of his body in shadow, he looked like one of Raphael’s 
dark portraits of himself — a bent head and intent eyes filled 
with visions of the future. 

Between the table and the marquise a tall, beautiful girl sat 
at her tapestry frame; sometimes she drew back from her 
work, sometimes she bent over it, and her hair, picturesque 
in its ebony smoothness and darkness, caught the light of the 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


143 


lamp. Helene was a picture in herself. In her beauty there 
was a rare distinctive character of power and refinement. 
Though her hair was gathered up and drawn back from her 
face, so as to trace a clearly marked line about her head, so 
thick and abundant was it, so recalcitrant to the comb, that 
it sprang back in curl-tendrils to the nape of her neck. The 
bountiful line of eyebrows was evenly marked out in dark con- 
trasting outline upon her pure forehead. On her upper lip 
beneath the Grecian nose with its sensitively perfect curve of 
nostril, there lay a faint, swarthy shadow, the sign-manual 
of coyrage; but the enchanting roundness of contour, the 
frankly innocent expression of her other features, the trans- 
parence of the delicate carnations, the voluptuous softness of 
the lips, the flawless oval of the outline of the face, and with 
these, and more than all these, the saintlike expression in the 
girlish eyes, gave to her vigorous loveliness the distinctive 
touch of feminine grace, that enchanting modesty which we 
look for in these angels of peace and love. Yet there was no 
suggestion of fragility about her ; and, surely, with so grand 
a woman’s frame, so attractive a face, she must possess a corre- 
sponding warmth of heart and strength of soul. 

She was as silent as her schoolboy brother. Seemingly a 
prey to the fateful maiden meditations which baffle a father’s 
penetration and even a mother’s sagacity, it was impossible 
to be certain whether it was the lamplight that cast those 
shadows that flitted over her face like thin clouds over a 
bright sky, or whether they were passing shades of secret and 
painful thoughts. 

Husband and wife had quite forgotten the two older chil- 
dren at that moment, though now and again the general’s 
questioning glance traveled to that second mute picture ; a 
larger growth, a gracious realization, as it were, of the hopes 
embodied in the baby forms rioting in the foreground. Their 
faces made up a kind of living poem, illustrating life’s various 
phases. The luxurious background of the salon, the different 


144 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


attitudes, the strong contrasts of coloring in the faces, differ- 
ing with the character of differing ages, the modeling of the 
forms brought into high relief by the light — altogether it was 
a page of human life, richly illuminated beyond the art of 
painter, sculptor, or poet. Silence, solitude, night, and winter 
lent a final touch of majesty to complete the simplicity and 
sublimity of this exquisite effect of nature’s contriving. Mar- 
ried life is full of these sacred hours, which perhaps owe their 
indefinable charm to some vague memory of a better world. 
A divine radiance surely shines upon them, the destined com- 
pensation for some portion of earth’s sorrows, the solace which 
enables man to accept life. We seem to behold a vision of 
an enchanted universe, the great conception of its system 
widens out before our eyes, and social life pleads for its laws 
by bidding us look to the future. 

Yet in spite of the tender glances that Helene gave Abel 
and Moina after a fresh outburst of merriment ; in spite of 
the look of gladness in her transparent face whenever she stole 
a glance at her father, a deep melancholy pervaded her ges- 
tures, her attitude, and, more than all, her eyes veiled by 
their long lashes. Those white, strong hands, through which 
rhe light passed, tinting them with a diaphanous almost fluid 
red — those hands were trembling. Once only did the eyes 
of the mother and daughter clash without shrinking, and the 
two women read each other’s thoughts in a look, cold, wan, 
and respectful on Helene’s part, sombre and threatening on 
her mother’s. At once Helene’s eyes were lowered to her 
work, she plied her needle swiftly, and it was long before she 
raised her head, bowed as it seemed by a weight of thought 
too heavy to bear. Was the marquise over-harsh with this 
one of her children ? Did she think this harshness needful ? 
Was she jealous of Helene’s beauty? She might still hope to 
rival Helene, but only by the magic arts of the toilet. Or, 
again, had her daughter, like many a girl who reaches the 
clairvoyant age, read the secrets which this wife (to all ap- 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


145 


pearance so religiously faithful in the fulfillment of her duties) 
believed to be buried in her own heart as deeply as in a 
grave ? 

Helene had reached an age when purity of soul inclines to 
pass over-rigid judgments. A certain order of mind is apt 
to exaggerate transgression into crime; imagination reacts 
upon conscience, and a young girl is a hard judge because she 
magnifies the seriousness of the offense. Helene seemed to 
think herself worthy of no one. Perhaps there was a secret 
in her past life, perhaps something had happened, unintelligi- 
ble to her at the time, but with gradually developing signifi- 
cance for a mind grown susceptible to religious influences; 
something which lately seemed to have degraded her, as it 
were, in her own eyes and according to her own romantic 
standard. This change in her demeanor dated from the day 
of reading Schiller’s noble tragedy of “ William Tell ” in a 
series of translations. Her mother scolded her for letting the 
book fall, and then remarked to herself that the passage which 
had so worked on Helene’s feelings was the scene in which 
William Tell, who spilt the blood of a tyrant to save a nation, 
fraternizes in some sort with John the Parricide. Helene 
had grown humble, dutiful, and self-contained ; she no longer 
cared for gayety. Never had she made so much of her father, 
especially when the marquise was not by to watch her girlish 
caresses. And yet, if Helene’s affection for her mother had 
cooled at all, the change in her manner was so slight as to be 
almost imperceptible; so slight that the general could not 
have noticed it, jealous though he might be of the harmony 
of home. No masculine insight could have sounded the 
depths of those two feminine natures; the one was young and 
generous, the other sensitive and proud ; the first had a 
wealth of indulgence in her nature, the second was full of 
craft and love. If the marquise made her daughter’s life a 
burden to her by a woman’s subtle tyranny, it was a tyranny 
invisible to all but the victim ; and, for the rest, these con* 
10 


146 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY \ 


lectures only called forth after the event must remain conjec- 
tures. Until this night no accusing flash of light had escaped 
either of them, but an ominous mystery was too surely growing 
up between them ; a mystery known only to themselves and 
God. 

“ Come, Abel,” called the marquise, seizing on her oppor- 
tunity when the children were tired of play and still for a 
moment. Come, come, my child ; you must be put to 
bed ” 

And with a glance that must be obeyed, she caught him up 
and took him on her knee. 

“ What ! ” exclaimed the general. “ Half-past ten o’clock, 
and not one of the servants has come back ! The rascals ! 
Gustave,” he added, turning ro his son, “ I allowed you to 
read that book only on the condition that you should put it 
away at ten o’clock. You ought to have shut up the book at 
the proper time and gone to bed, as you promised. If you 
mean to make your mark in the world, you must keep youi 
word ; let it be a second religion to you and a point of honor. 
Fox, one of the greatest of English orators, was remarkable, 
above all things, for the beauty of his character, and the very 
first of his qualities was the scrupulous faithfulness with which 
he kept his engagements. When he was a child, his father 
(an Englishman of the old school) gave him a pretty strong 
lesson which he never forgot. Like most rich Englishmen, 
Fox’s father had a country house and a considerable park 
about it. Now, in the park there was an old summer-house, 
and orders had been given that this summer-house was to be 
pulled down and put up somewhere else where there was a 
finer view. Fox was just about your age, and had come home 
for the holidays. Boys are fond of seeing things pulled to 
pieces, so young Fox asked to stay on at home for a few days 
longer to see the old summer-house taken down ; but his 
father said that he must go back to school on the proper day, 
so there was anger between father and son. Fox’s mother 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


147 


(like all mammas) took the boy’s part. Then the father 
solemnly promised that the summer-house should stay where 
it was till the next holidays. 

“ So Fox went back to school ; and his father, thinking that 
lessons would soon drive the whole thing out of the boy’s 
mind, had the summer-house pulled down and put up in the 
new position. But, as it happened, the persistent youngster 
thought of nothing but that summer-house ; and as soon as he 
came home again, his first care was to go out to look at the 
old building, and he came in to breakfast looking quite dole- 
ful, and said to his father: ‘You have broken your promise.’ 
The old English gentleman said with confusion full of dignity, 

‘ That is true, my boy ; but I will make amends. A man 
ought to think of keeping his word before he thinks of his 
fortune ; for by keeping to his word he will gain fortune, 
while all the fortunes in the world will not efface the stain left 
on your conscience by a breach of faith.’ Then he gave 
orders that the summer-house should be put up again in the 
old place, and when it had been rebuilt he had it taken down 
again for his son to see. Let this be a lesson to you, Gustave.” 

Gustave had been listening with interest, and now he closed 
the book at once. There was a moment’s silence, while the 
general took possession of MoYna, who could scarcely keep her 
eyes open. The little one’s languid head fell back on her 
father’s breast, and in a moment she was fast asleep, wrapped 
round about in her golden curls. 

Just then a sound of hurrying footsteps rang on the pave- 
ment out in the street, immediately followed by three knocks 
on the street-door, waking the echoes of the house. The re- 
verberating blows told, as plainly as a cry for help, that here 
was a man flying for his life. The house dog barked furiously. 
A thrill of excitement ran through Helene and Gustave and 
the general and his wife ; but neither Abel, with the night- 
cap strings just tied under his chin, nor Moina awoke. 

“The fellow is in a hurry! ” exclaimed the general. He 


148 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


put the little girl down on the chair and hastened out of the 
room, heedless of his wife’s entreating cry: “ Dear, do not go 
down ” 

He stepped into his own room for a pair of pistols, lighted 
a dark lantern, sprang at lightning speed down the staircase, 
and in another minute reached the house-door, his oldest boy 
fearlessly following. 

“ Who is there? ” demanded he. 

“Let me in,” panted a breathless voice. 

“ Are you a friend ? ” 

“Yes, friend.” 

“ Are you alone? ” 

“ Yes ! But let me in ; they are after me!” 

The general had scarcely set the door ajar before a man 
slipped into the porch with the uncanny swiftness of a shadow. 
Before the master of the house could prevent him, the intruder 
had closed the door with a well-directed kick, and set his back 
against it resolutely, as if he were determined that it should 
not be opened again. In a moment the general had his lan- 
tern and pistol at a level with the stranger’s breast, and beheld 
a man of medium height in a fur-lined pelisse. It was an old 
man’s garment, both too large and too long for its present 
wearer. Chance or caution had slouched the man’s hat over 
his eyes. 

“You can lower your pistol, sir,” said this person. “I 
do not claim to stay in your house against your will ; but if I 
leave it, death is waiting for me at the barrier. And what a 
death ! You would be answerable to God for it ! I ask for 
your hospitality for two hours. And bear this in mind, sir, ■ 
that, suppliant as I am, I have a right to command with the 
despotism of necessity. I want the Arab’s hospitality. Either 
I and my secret must be inviolable, or open the door and I 
will go to my death. I want secrecy, a safe hiding-place, and 
water. Oh 1 water!” he cried again, with a rattle in his 
throat. 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


149 


“ Who are you?” demanded the general, taken aback by 
the stranger’s feverish volubility. 

“ Ah ! who am 1? Good, open the door, and I will put a 
distance between us,” retorted the other, and there was a 
diabolical irony in his tone. 

Dexterously as the marquis passed the light of the lantern 
over the man’s face, he could only see the lower half of it, 
and that in nowise prepossessed him in favor of this singular 
claimant of hospitality. The cheeks were livid and quivering, 
the features dreadfully contorted. Under the shadow of the 
hat-brim a pair of eyes gleamed out like flames ; the feeble 
candlelight looked almost dim in comparison. Some sort of 
answer must be made however. 

“ Your language, sir, is so extraordinary that in my place 
you yourself ” 

“ My life is in your hands ! ” the intruder broke in. The 
sound of his voice was dreadful to hear. 

“Two hours?” said the marquis wavering. 

“ Two hours,” echoed the other. 

Then quite suddenly, with a desperate gesture, he pushed 
back his hat and left his forehead bare, and, as if he meant to 
try a final expedient, he gave the general a glance that seemed 
to plunge like a vivid flash into his very soul. That electrical 
discharge of intelligence and will was swift as lightning and 
crushing as a thunderbolt ; for there are moments when a 
human being is invested for a brief space with inexplicable 
power. 

“ Come, whoever you may be, you shall be in safety under 
my roof,” the master of the house said gravely at last, acting, 
as he imagined, upon one of those intuitions which a man 
cannot always explain to himself. 

“God will repay you!” said the stranger, with a deep, 
involuntary sigh. 

“ Have you weapons? ” asked the general. 

For all answer the stranger flung open his fur pelisse, 


150 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


and scarcely gave the other time for a glance before he 
wrapped it about him again. To all appearance he was un- 
armed and in evening dress. Swift as the soldier’s scrutiny 
had been, he saw something, however, which made him ex- 
claim — 

“ Where the devil have you been to get yourself in such a 
mess in such dry weather? ” 

“ More questions ! ” said the stranger haughtily. 

At the words the marquis caught sight of his son, and his 
own late homily on the strict fulfillment of a given word came 
up in his mind. In lively vexation, he exclaimed, not with- 
out a touch of anger — 

“ What ! little rogue, you here when you ought to be in 
bed?” 

“ Because I thought I might be some good in danger,” 
answered Gustave. 

“There, go up to your room,” said his father, mollified by 
the reply. “And you” (addressing the stranger), “come 
with me.” 

The two men grew as silent as a pair of gamblers who watch 
each other’s play with mutual suspicions. The general him- 
self began to be troubled with ugly presentiments. The 
strange visit weighed upon his mind already like a nightmare ; 
but he had passed his word, there was no help for it now, 
and he led the way along the passages and stairways till they 
reached a large room on the third floor immediately above the 
salon. This was an empty room where linen was dried in the 
winter. It had but the one door, and for all decoration 
boasted one solitary, shabby looking-glass above the mantel, 
left by the previous owner, and a great pier-glass, placed 
provisionally opposite the fireplace until such time as a use 
should be found for it in the rooms below. The four yellow- 
ish walls were bare. The floor had never been swept. The 
huge attic was icy-cold, and the furniture consisted of a couple 
of rickety straw-bottomed chairs, or rather frames of chairs. 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


151 


The general set the lantern down upon the mantel. Then he 
spoke : 

“It is necessary for your own safety to hide you in this 
comfortless attic. And, as you have my promise to keep your 
secret, you will permit me to lock you in.” 

The other bent his head in acquiescence. 

“I asked for nothing but a hiding-place, secrecy, and 
water,” returned he. 

“ I will bring you some directly,” said the marquis, shutting 
the door cautiously. He groped his way down into the salon 
for a lamp before going to the kitchen to look for a carafe. 

“Well, what is it?” the marquise asked quickly. 

“Nothing, dear,” he returned coolly. 

“ But we listened, and we certainly heard you go upstairs 
with somebody.” 

“ Helene,” said the general, and he looked at his daughter, 
who raised her face, “bear in mind that your father’s honor 
depends upon your discretion. You must have heard nothing.” 

The girl bent her head in answer. The marquise was con- 
fused and smarting inwardly at the way in which her husband 
had thought fit to silence her. 

Meanwhile the general went for the bottle and a tumbler, 
and returned to the room above. His prisoner was leaning 
against the mantel, his head was bare, he had flung down his 
hat on one of the two chairs. Evidently he had not expected 
to have so bright a light turned upon him, and he frowned 
and looked anxious as he met the general’s keen eyes ; but his 
face softened and wore a gracious expression as he thanked 
his protector. When the latter placed the bottle and glass on 
the mantel-shelf, the stranger’s eyes flashed out on him again ; 
and when he spoke, it was in musical tones with no sign of 
the previous guttural convulsion, though his voice was still 
unsteady with repressed emotion. 

“ I shall seem to you to be a strange being, sir, but you 
must pardon the caprices of necessity. If you propose to re- 


152 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY: 


main in the room, I beg that you will not look at me while I 
am drinking.” 

Vexed at this continual obedience to a man whom he dis- 
liked, the general sharply turned his back upon him, The 
stranger thereupon drew a white handkerchief from his pocket 
and wound it about his right hand. Then he seized the 
carafe and emptied it at a draught. The marquis, staring 
vacantly into the tall mirror across the room, without a 
thought of breaking his implicit promise, saw the stranger’s 
figure distinctly reflected by the opposite looking-glass, and 
saw, too, a red stain suddenly appear through the folds of the 
white bandage — the man’s hands were steeped in blood. 

“Ah ! you saw me!” cried the other. He had drunk off 
the water and wrapped himself again in his cloak, and now 
scrutinized the general suspiciously. “ It is all over with me ! 
Here they come ! ” 

“I don’t hear anything,” said the marquis. 

“You have not the same interest that I have in listening 
for sounds in the air.” 

“You have been fighting a duel, I suppose, to be in such a 
state?” queried the general, not a little disturbed by the 
color of those broad, dark patches staining his visitor's shabby 
cloak. 

“Yes, a duel; you have it,” said the other, and a bitter 
smile flitted over his lips. 

As he spoke a sound rang along the distant road, a sound 
of galloping horses ; but so faint as yet that it was the merest 
dawn of a sound. The general's trained ear recognized the 
advance of a troop of regulars. 

“That is the gendarmerie,” said he. 

He glanced at his prisoner to reassure him after his own 
involuntary indiscretion, took the lamp, and went down to the 
salon. He had scarcely laid the key of the room above upon 
the mantel when the hoof-beats sounded louder and came 
swiftly nearer and nearer the house. The general felt a shiver 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


153 


of excitement, and indeed the horses stopped at the house- 
door ; a few words were exchanged among the men, and one 
of them dismounted and knocked loudly. There was no help 
for it ; the general went to open the door. He could scarcely 
conceal his inward perturbation at the sight of half a dozen 
gendarmes outside, the metal rims of their caps gleaming like 
silver in the moonlight. 

“ My lord,” said the corporal, “ have you heard a man run 
past toward the barrier within the last few minutes?” 

“Toward the barrier? No.” 

“ Have you opened the door to any one? ” 

“ Now, am I in the habit of answering the door myself, 
what ?” 

“I ask your pardon, general, but just now it seems to me 
that ” 

“Really ! ” cried the marquis wrathfully. “Have you a 
mind to try joking with me? What right have you ? ” 

“None at all, none at all, my lord,” cried the corporal, 
hastily putting in a soft answer. “ You will excuse our zeal. 
We know, of course, that a peer of France is not likely to 
harbor a murderer at this time of night ; but as we want any 
information we can get ” 

“A murderer ! ” cried the general. “ Who, then, can have 
been ” 

“ Monsieur le Baron de Mauny has just been murdered. It 
was a blow from an axe, and we are in hot pursuit of the 
criminal. We know for certain that he is somewhere in this 
neighborhood, and we shall hunt him down. By your leave, 
general,” and the man swung himself into the saddle as he 
spoke. It was well that he did so, for a corporal of gendar- 
merie trained to alert observation and quick surmise would 
have had his suspicions at once if he had caught sight of the 
general’s face. Everything that passed through the soldier's 
mind was faithfully revealed in his frank countenance. 

“ Is it known whom the murderer is? ” asked he. 

F 


154 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


“No,” said the other, now in the saddle. “ He left the 
bureau full of bank-notes and gold untouched.” 

“It was revenge, then,” said the marquis. 

“ On an old man ? pshaw ! No, no, the fellow hadn’t time 
to take it, that was all,” and the corporal galloped after his 
comrades, who were almost out of sight by this time. 

For a few minutes the general stood, a victim to perplexities 
which need no explanation ; but in a moment he heard the 
servants returning home, their voices were raised in some sort 
of dispute at the cross-roads of Montreuil. When they came 
in he gave vent to his feelings in an explosion of rage, his 
wrath fell upon them like a thunderbolt, and all the echoes of 
the house trembled at the sound of his voice. In the midst 
of the storm his own man, the boldest and cleverest of the 
party, brought out an excuse ; they had been stopped, he said, 
by the gendarmerie at the gate of Montreuil, a murder had 
been committed, and the police were in pursuit. In a mo- 
ment the general’s anger vanished, he said not another word ; 
then, bethinking himself of his own singular position, drily 
ordered them all off to bed at once, and left them amazed at 
his readiness to accept their fellow-servant’s lying excuse. 

While these incidents took place in the yard, an apparently 
trifling occurrence had changed the relative positions of three 
characters in this story. The marquis had scarcely left the 
room before his wife looked first toward the key on the man- 
tel-shelf and then at Helene, and, after some wavering, bent 
toward her daughter and said in a low voice, “ Helene, your 
father has left the key on the mantel.” 

The girl looked up in surprise and glanced timidly at her 
mother. The marquise’s eyes sparkled with curiosity. 

“Well, mamma?” she said, and her voice had a troubled 
ring. 

“ I should like to know what is going on upstairs. If 
there is anybody up there, he has not stirred yet. Just go 
quietly up ” 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


155 


“ 1 ?" cried the girl, with something like horror in her 
tones. 

“Are you afraid? ” 

“No, mamma, but I thought I heard a man’s footsteps,'* 
she answered. 

u If I could go myself, I should not have asked you to go, 
Helene,” said her mother with cold dignity. “ Ii your father 
were to come back and did not see me, he would go to look 
for me, perhaps, but he would not notice your absence.” 

“Madame, if you bid me go, I will go,” said Helene, 
“ but I shall lose my father’s good opinion ” 

“What is this?” cried the marquise in a sarcastic tone. 
“ But, since you take a thing that was said in joke in earnest, 
I now order you to go upstairs and see whom it is in the room 
above. Here is the key, child. When your father told you 
to say nothing about this thing that happened, he did not 
forbid you to go up to the room. Go at once — and learn 
that a daughter ought never to judge her mother.” 

The last words were spoken with all the severity of a justly 
offended mother. The marquise took the key and handed it 
to Helene, who rose without a word and left the room. 

“ My mother can always easily obtain her pardon,” thought 
the girl ; “ but as for me, my father will never think the same 
of me again. Does she mean to rob me of his tenderness? 
Does she want to turn me out of his house?” 

These were the thoughts that set her imagination in a 
sudden ferment, as she went down the dark passage to the 
mysterious door at the end. When she stood before it, her 
mental confusion grew to a fearful pitch. Feelings hitherto 
forced down into inner depths crowded up at the summons of 
these confused thoughts. Perhaps hitherto she had never be- 
lieved that a happy life lay before her, but now, in this awful 
moment, her despair was complete. She shook convulsively 
as she set the key in the lock; so great, indeed, was her agita- 
tion that she stopped for a moment and laid her hand on her 


156 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


heart, as if to still the heavy throbs that sounded in her ears. 
Then she opened the door. 

The creaking of the hinges sounded doubtless in vain on 
the murderer’s ears. Acute as were his powers of hearing, he 
stood as if lost in thought, and so motionless that he might 
have been glued to the wall against which he leaned. In the 
circle of semi-opaque darkness, dimly lit by the bull’s-eye 
lantern, he looked like the shadowy figure of some dead 
knight, standing for ever in his shadowy mortuary niche in 
the gloom of some Gothic chapel. Drops of cold sweat 
trickled over the broad, sallow forehead. An incredible fear- 
lessness looked out from every tense feature. His eyes of fire 
were fixed and tearless; he seemed to be watching some 
struggle in the darkness beyond him. Stormy thoughts passed 
swiftly across a face whose firm decision spoke of a character 
of no common order. His whole person, bearing, and frame 
bore out the impression of a tameless spirit. The man looked 
power and strength personified ; he stood facing the darkness 
as if it were the visible image of his own future. 

These physical characteristics had made no impression upon 
the general, familiar as he was with the powerful faces of the 
group of giants gathered about Napoleon ; speculative curi- 
osity, moreover, as to the why and wherefore of the apparition 
had completely filled his mind ; but Helene, with feminine 
sensitiveness to surface impressions, was struck by the blended 
chaos of light and darkness, grandeur and passion, suggesting 
a likeness between this stranger and Lucifer recovering from 
his fall. Suddenly the storm apparent in his face was stilled 
as if by magic ; and the indefinable power to sway which the 
stranger exercised upon others, and perha; s unconsciously 
and as by reflex action upon himself, spread its influence about 
him with the progressive swiftness of a flood. A torrent of 
thought rolled away from his brow as his face resumed its 
ordinary expression. Perhaps it was the strangeness of this 
meeting, or perhaps it was the mystery into which she had 















































ESS 

































HE TURNED HIS HEAD TOWARD HIS HOST’S DAUGHTER . 



A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


157 


penetrated, that held the young girl spellbound in the door- 
way, so that she could look at a face pleasant to behold and 
full of interest. For some moments she stood in the magical 
silence ; a trouble had come upon her never known before 
in her young life. Perhaps some exclamation broke from 
Helene, perhaps she moved unconsciously ; or it may be that 
the hunted criminal returned of his own accord from the 
world of ideas to the material world and heard some one 
breathing in the room ; however it was, he turned his head 
toward his host’s daughter and saw dimly in the shadow a 
noble face and queenly form, which he must have taken for 
an angel’s, so motionless she stood, so vague and like a spirit. 

“ Monsieur ” a trembling voice cried. 

The murderer trembled. 

“ A woman ! ” he cried under his breath. “ Is it possible? 
Go,” he cried ; “ I deny that any one has a right to pity, to 
absolve, or condemn me. I must live alone. Go, my child,” 
he added, with an imperious gesture ; “ I should ill requite the 
service done me by the master of the house if I were to allow 
a single creature under his roof to breathe the same air with 
me. I must submit to be judged by the laws of the world.” 

The last words were uttered in a lower voice. Even as he 
realized with a profound intuition all the manifold misery 
awakened by that melancholy thought, the glance that he 
gave Helene had something of the power of the serpent, stir- 
ring a whole dormant world in the mind of the strange girl 
before him. To her that glance was like a light revealing 
unknown lands. She was stricken with strange trouble, help- 
less, quelled by a magnetic power exerted unconsciously. 
Trembling and ashamed, she went out and returned to the 
salon. She had scarcely entered the room before her father 
came back, so that she had not time to say a word to her 
mother. 

The general was wholly absorbed in thought. He folded 
his arms, and paced silently to and fro between the windows 


153 


A WOMAN OF THIRT*. 


which looked out upon the street and the second row which 
gave upon the garden. His wife held the sleeping Abel on 
her knee, and little Moina lay in untroubled slumber in the 
low chair, like a bird in its nest. Her elder sister stared 
into the fire, a skein of silk in one hand, a needle in the 
other. 

Deep silence prevailed, broken only by lagging footsteps 
on the stairs, as one by one the servants crept away to bed ; 
there was an occasional burst of stifled laughter, a last echo of 
the wedding festivity, or doors were opened as they still 
talked among themselves, then shut. A smothered sound 
came now and again from the bedrooms, a chair fell, the old 
coachman coughed feebly, then all was silent. 

In a little while the dark majesty with which sleeping earth 
is invested at midnight brought all things under its sway. 
No lights shone but the light of the stars. The frost gripped 
the ground. There was not a sound of a voice, nor a living 
creature stirring. The crackling of the fire only seemed to 
make the depth of the silence more fully felt. 

The church clock of Montreuil had just struck one, when 
an almost inaudible sound of a light footstep came from the 
second flight of stairs. The marquis and his daughter, both 
believing that M. de Mauny’s murderer was a prisoner above, 
thought that one of the maids had come down, and no one 
was at all surprised to hear the door open in the antechamber. 
Quite suddenly the murderer appeared in their midst. The 
marquis himself was sunk in deep musings, the mother and 
daughter were silent, the one from keen curiosity, the other 
from sheer astonishment, so that the visitor was almost half- 
way across the room when he spoke to the general. 

“Sir, the two hours are almost over,” he said, in a voice 
that was strangely calm and musical. 

“ You here J” cried the general. “ By what means ?” 

and he gave wife and daughter a formidable questioning 
glance. Helene grew red as fire. 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


159 


“ You! ” he went on, in a tone filled with horror. “You 
among us ! A murderer covered with blood ! You are a blot 
on this picture! Go, go out!” he added in a burst of 
rage. 

At that word “ murderer,” the marquise cried out; as for 
Helene, it seemed to mark an epoch in her life, there was not 
a trace of surprise in her face. She looked as if she had been 
waiting for this — for him. Those so vast thoughts of hers had 
found a meaning. The punishment reserved by heaven for 
her sins flamed out before her. In her own eyes she was as 
great a criminal as this murderer; she confronted him with 
her quiet gaze ; she was his fellow, his sister. It seemed to 
her that in this accident the command of God had been made 
manifest. If she had been a few years older, reason would 
have disposed of her remorse, but at this moment she was 
like one distraught. 

The stranger stood impassive and self-possessed ; a scornful 
smile overspread his features and his thick, red lips were 
curled ironically. 

“ You appreciate the magnanimity of my behavior very 
badly,” he said slowly. “ I would not touch with my 
fingers the glass of water you brought me to allay my thirst ; 
I did not so much as think of washing my blood-stained 
hands under your roof ; I am going away, leaving nothing of 
my crime ” (here his lips were compressed) “ but the memory ; 
I have tried to leave no trace of my presence in this house. 
Indeed, I would not even allow your daughter to ” 

“My daughter /” cried the general, with a horror-stricken 
glance at Helene. “ Vile wretch, go, or I will kill you ” 

“ The two hours are not yet over,” said the other ; “ if you 
kill me or give me up, you must lower yourself in your own 
eyes — and in mine.” 

At these last words, the general turned to stare at the crimi- 
nal in dumb amazement ; but he could not endure the intoler- 
able light in those eyes which for the second time disorganized 


160 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


his being. He was afraid of showing weakness once more, 
conscious as he was that his will was weaker already. 

“An old man ! You can never have seen a family,” he 
said, with a father’s glance at his wife and children. 

“Yes, .an old man,” echoed the stranger, frowning slightly. 

“Fly! ” cried the general, but he did not dare to look at 
his guest. “Our compact is broken. I shall not kill you. 
No ! I will never be purveyor to the scaffold. But go out. 
You make us shudder.” 

“ I know that,” said the other patiently. “ There is not a 
spot on French soil where I can set foot and be safe ; but if 
man’s justice, like God’s, took all into account, if man’s jus- 
tice deigned to inquire which was the monster — the murderer 
or his victim — then I might hold up my head among my fel- 
lows. Can you not guess that other crimes preceded that 
blow from an axe? I constituted myself his judge and exe- 
cutioner ; I stepped in where man’s justice failed. That was 
my crime. Farewell, sir. Bitter though you have made 
your hospitality, I shall not forget it. I shall always bear in 
my heart a feeling of gratitude toward one man in the world, 
and you are that man. But I could wish that you had showed 
yourself more generous ! ” 

He turned toward the door, but in the same instant Helene 
leaned to whisper something in her mother’s ear. 

“Ah ! ” 

At the cry that broke from his wife, the general trembled as * 
if he had seen MoTna lying dead. There stood Helene, and 
the murderer had turned instinctively, with something like 
anxiety about these folk in his face. 

“What is it, dear?” asked the general. 

“ Helene wants to go with him.” 

The murderer’s face flushed. 

“If that is how my mother understands an almost involun- 
tary exclamation,” Helene said in a low voice, “ I will fulfill 
her wishes.” She glanced about her with something like 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


161 


fierce pride ; then the girl’s eyes fell, and she stood, admirable 
in her modesty. 

“ Helene, did you go up to the room where ? ” 

“ Yes, father.” 

“ Helene ” (and his voice shook with a convulsive tremor), 
“ is this the first time that you have seen this man? ” 

“Yes, father.” 

“ Then it is not natural that you should intend to ” 

“ If it is not natural, father, at any rate it is true.” 

“Oh! child,” said the marquise, lowering her voice, but 
not so much but that her husband could hear her, “you are 
false to all the principles of honor, modesty, and right which 
I have tried to cultivate in your heart. If until this fatal hour 
your life has only been one lie, there is nothing to regret in 
your loss. It can hardly be the moral perfection of this 
stranger that attracts you to him? Can it be the kind of 
power that commits crime? I have too good an opinion of 
you to suppose that ” 

“ Oh, suppose everything, madame,” Helene said coldly. 

But though her force of character sustained this ordeal, her 
flashing eyes could scarcely hold the tears that filled them. 
The stranger, watching her, guessed the mother’s language 
from the girl’s tears, and turned his eagle glance upon the 
marquise. An irresistible power constrained her to look at 
this terrible seducer ; but as her eyes met his bright, glitter- 
ing gaze, she felt a shiver run through her frame, such a shock 
as we feel at the sight of a reptile or the contact of a Leyden 
jar. 

“ Dear! ” she cried, turning to her husband, “this is the 
Fiend himself! He can divine everything ! ” 

The general rose to his feet and went to the bell. 

“ He means ruin for you,” Helene said to the murderer. 

The stranger smiled, took one forward stride, grasped the 
general’s arm, and compelled him to endure a steady gaxe 
which benumbed the soldier’s brain and left him powerless. 

11 


162 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


“ I will repay you now for your hospitality,” he said, “and 
then we shall be quits. I will spare you the shame by giving 
myself up. After all, what should I do now with my life?” 

“ You could repent,” answered Helene, and her glance con- 
veyed such hope as only glows in a young girl’s eyes. 

“ I shall never repent said the murderer in a sonorous 
voice, as he raised his head proudly. 

“ His hands are stained with blood,” the father said. 

“ I will wipe it away,” she answered. 

“ But do you so much as know whether he cares for you ? ” 
said her father, not daring now to look at the stranger. 

The murderer came up a little nearer. Some light within 
seemed to glow through Helene’s beauty, grave and maidenly 
though it was, coloring and bringing into relief, as it were, 
the least details, the most delicate lines in her face. The 
stranger, with that terrible fire still blazing in his eyes, gave 
one tender glance to her enchanting loveliness, then he spoke, 
his tones revealing how deeply he had been moved. 

“And if I refuse to allow this sacrifice of yourself, and so 
discharge my debt of two hours of existence to your father ; 
is not this love, love for yourself alone ? ” 

“Then do you too reject me?” Helene’s cry rang pain- 
fully through the hearts of all who heard her. “Farewell, 
then, to you all ; I will die.” 

“ What does this mean? ” asked the father and mother. 

Helene gave her mother an eloquent glance and lowered her 
eyes. 

Since the first attempt made by the general and his wife to 
contest by word or action the intruder’s strange presumption 
to the right of staying in their midst, from their first experi- 
ence of the power of those glittering eyes, a mysterious torpor 
had crept over them, and their benumbed faculties struggled 
in vain with a preternatural influence. The air seemed to 
have suddenly grown so heavy that they could scarcely 
breathe ; yet, while they could not find the reason of this 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


163 


feeling of oppression, a voice within told them that this mag- 
netic presence was the real cause of their helplessness. In 
this moral agony, it flashed across the general that he must 
make every effort to overcome this influence on his daughter’s 
reeling brain ; he caught her by the waist and drew her into 
the embrasure of a window, as far as possible from the mur- 
derer. 

“Darling,” he murmured, “if some wild love has been 
suddenly born in your heart, I cannot believe that you have 
not the strength of soul to quell the mad impulse ; your inno- 
cent life, your pure and dutiful soul, has given me too many ■ 
proofs of your character. There must be something behind 
all this. Well, this heart of mine is full of indulgence, you 
can tell everything to me ; even if it breaks, dear child, I can 
be silent about my grief, and keep your confession a secret. 
What is it ? Are you jealous of our love for your brothers or 
your little sister ? Is it some love trouble ? Are you unhappy 
here at home ? Tell me about it, tell me the reasons that urge 
you to leave your home, to rob it of its greatest charm, to 
leave your mother and brothers and your little sister?” 

“ I am in love with no one, father, and jealous of no one, 
not even of your friend the diplomatist, Monsieur de Van- 
denesse.” 

The marquise turned pale; her daughter saw this, and 
stopped short. 

“ Sooner or later I must live under some man’s protection, 
must I not ? ” 

“ That is true.” 

“Do we ever know,” she went on, “the human being to 
whom we link our destinies? Now, I believe in this man.” 

“Oh, child,” said the general, raising his voice, “you 
have no idea of all the misery that lies in stoie for you.” 

“ I am thinking of his." 

“ What a life ! ” groaned the father. 

“A woman’s life,” the girl murmured. 


164 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


“You have a great knowledge of life!” exclaimed the 
marquise, finding speech at last. 

“ Madame, my answers are shaped by the questions; but if 
you desire it, I will speak more clearly.” 

“Speak out, my child I am a mother.” 

Mother and daughter looked each other in the face, and the 
marquise said no more. At last she said — 

“ Helene, if you have any reproaches to make, I would 
rather bear them than see you go away with a man from whom 
the whole world shrinks in horror.” 

“Then you see yourself, madame, that but for me he would 
be quite alone.” 

“ That will do, madame,” the general cried ; “ we have but 
one daughter left to us now,” and he looked at Mo7na, who slept 
on. “As for you,” he added, turning to Helene, “I will put 
you in a convent.” 

“So be it, father,” she said, in calm despair, “I shall die 
there. You are answerable to God alone for my life and for 
his soul.” 

A deep, sudden silence fell after those words. The on- 
lookers during this strange scene, so utterly at variance with all 
the sentiments of ordinary life, shunned each other’s eloquent 
eyes. 

Suddenly the marquis happened to glance at his pistols. 
He caught up one of them, cocked the weapon, and pointed 
it at the intruder. At the click of firearms the other turned 
his piercing gaze full upon the general ; the soldier’s arm 
slackened indescribably and fell heavily to his side. The 
pistol dropped to the floor. 

“Girl, you are free,” said he, exhausted by this ghastly 
struggle. “Kiss your mother, if she will let you kiss her. 
For my own part, I wish never to see nor to hear of you 
again.” 

“ Helene,” the mother began, “only think of the wretched 
life before you.” 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


165 


A sort of rattling sound came from the intruder’s deep 
chest, all eyes turned to him. Disdain was plainly visible in 
his face. 

The general rose to his feet. “ My hospitality has cost me 
dear,” he cried. “ Before you came you had taken an old 
man’s life ; now you are dealing a deadly blow at a whole 
family. Whatever happens, there must be unhappiness in this 
house.” 

“ And if your daughter is happy?” asked the other, gazing 
steadily at the general. 

The father made a superhuman effort for self-control. “ If 
she is happy with you,” he said, “she is not worth re- 
gretting.” 

Helene knelt timidly before her father. 

“Father, I love and revere you,” she said, “whether you 
lavish all the treasures of your kindness upon me or make me 
feel to the full the rigor of disgrace. But I entreat that your 
last words of farewell shall not be words of anger.” 

The general could not trust himself to look at her. The 
stranger came nearer ; there was something half-diabolical, 
half-divine in the smile that he gave Helene. 

“Angel of pity, you that do not shrink in horror from a 
murderer, come, since you persist in your resolution of intrust- 
ing your life to me.” 

“Inconceivable ! ” cried her father. 

The marquise looked strangely at her daughter, opened her 
arms, and Helene fled to her in tears. 

“ Farewell,” she said ; “ farewell, mother ! ” The stranger 
trembled as Helene, undaunted, made sign to him that she 
was ready. She kissed her father’s hand ; and, as if perform- 
ing a duty, gave a hasty kiss to Moi'na and little Abel, then 
she vanished with the murderer. 

“ Which way are they going ? ” exclaimed the general, lis- 
tening to the footsteps of the two fugitives. “ Madame,” he 
turned to his wife, “ I think I must be dreaming ; there is 


166 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


some mystery behind all this, I do not understand it ; you 
must know what it means.” 

The marquise shivered. 

“ For some time past your daughter has grown extraordi- 
narily romantic and strangely high-flown in her ideas. In 
spite of the pains I have taken to combat these tendencies in 
her character ” 

“ This will not do ” began the general; but fancying 

that he heard footsteps in the garden, he broke off to fling 
open the window. 

“ Helene ! ” he shouted. 

His voice was lost in the darkness like a vain prophecy. 
The utterance of that name, to which there should never be 
answer any more, acted like a counter-spell ; it broke the 
charm and set him free from the evil enchantment which lay 
upon him. It was as if some spirit passed over his face. He 
now saw clearly what had taken place, and cursed his incom- 
prehensible weakness. A shiver of heat rushed from his heart 
to his head and feet ; he became himself once more, terrible, 
thirsting for revenge. He raised a dreadful cry. 

“ Help ! ” he thundered ; “ help ! ” 

He rushed to the bell-pull, pulled till the bells rang with a 
strange clamor of din, pulled till the cord gave way. The 
whole house was roused with a start. Still shouting, he flung 
open the windows that looked upon the street, called for the 
police, caught up his pistols, and fired them off to hurry the 
mounted patrols, the newly aroused servants, and the neigh- 
bors. The dogs barked at the sound of their master’s voice ; 
the horses neighed and stamped in their stalls. The quiet 
night was suddenly filled with hideous uproar. The general 
on the staircase, in pursuit of his daughter, saw the scared 
faces of the servants flocking from all parts of the house. 

“ My daughter ! ” he shouted. “ Helene has been carried 
off. Search the garden ! Keep a lookout on the road ! 
Open the gates for the gendarmerie ! Murder ! Help ! ” 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


167 


With the strength of fury he snapped the chain and let 
loose the great house-dog. 

“ Helene ! ” he cried ; “ Helene 1 ” 

The dog sprang out like a lion, barking furiously, and 
dashed into the garden, leaving the general far behind. A 
troop of horse came along the road at a gallop, and he flew 
to open the gates himself. 

“ Corporal ! ” he shouted, “ cut off the retreat of Monsieur 
de Mauny’s murderer. They have gone through my garden. 
Quick ! Put a cordon of men to watch the ways by the Butte 
de Picardie. I will beat up the grounds, parks, and houses. 
The rest of you keep a lookout along the road," he ordered 
the servants ; “ form a chain between the barrier and Ver- 
sailles. Forward, every man of you ! ” 

He caught up the rifle which his man had brought out, and 
dashed into the garden. 

“ Find them ! ” he called to the dog. 

An ominous baying came in answer from the distance, and 
he plunged in the direction from which the growl seemed to 
come. 

It was seven o’clock in the morning ; all the search made 
by gendarmes, servants, and neighbors had been fruitless, and 
the dog had not come back. The general entered the salon, 
empty now for him though the other three children were 
there ; he was worn out with fatigue, and looked old already 
with that night’s work. 

“You have been very cold to your daughter,” he said, 
turning his eyes on his wife. “And now this is all that is 
left to us of her,” he added, indicating the embroidery frame, 
and the flower just begun. “Only just now she was there, 
and now she is lost lost ! ” 

Tears followed ; he hid his face in his hands, and for a few 
minutes he said no more ; he could not bear the sight of the 
room, which so short a time ago had made a setting to a pic- 
ture of the sweetest family happiness. The winter dawn was 


168 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


struggling with the dying lamplight ; the tapers burned down 
to their paper-wreaths and flared out ; everything was all in 
keeping with the father’s despair. 

“This must be destroyed,” he said after a pause, pointing 
to the tambour-frame. “ I shall never bear to see anything 
again that reminds us of her /” 

The terrible Christmas night when the marquis and his wife 
lost their oldest daughter, powerless to oppose the mysterious 
influence exercised by the man who involuntarily, as it were, 
stole Helene from them, was like a warning sent by Fate. 
The marquis was ruined by the failure of his stockbroker ; he 
borrowed money on his wife’s property, and lost it in the 
endeavor to retrieve his fortunes. Driven to desperate expe- 
dients, he left France. Six years went by. His family seldom 
had news of him ; but a few days before Spain recognized the 
independence of the American Republics, he wrote that he 
was coming home. 

So, one fine morning, it happened that several French 
merchants were on board a Spanish brig that lay a few leagues 
out from Bordeaux, impatient to reach their native land again, 
with wealth acquired by long years of toil and perilous adven- 
tures in Venezuela and Mexico. 

One of the passengers, a man who looked aged by trouble 
rather than by years, was leaning against the bulwark netting, 
apparently quite unaffected by the sight to be seen from the 
upper deck. The bright day, the sense that the voyage was 
safely over, had brought all the passengers above to greet their 
native land. The larger number of them insisted that they 
could see, far off in the distance, the houses and lighthouses 
on the coast of Gascony and the Tower of Cordouan, melting 
into the fantastic erections of white cloud along the horizon. 
But for the silver fringe that played about their bows and the 
long furrow swiftly effaced in their wake, they might have 
been perfectly still in mid-ocean, so calm was the sea. The 
sky was magically clear, the dark blue of the vault above 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


169 


paled by imperceptible gradations, until it blended with the 
bluish water, a gleaming line that sparkled like stars marking 
the dividing line of sea. The sunlight caught myriads of 
facets over the wide surface of the ocean, in such a sort that 
the vast plain of salt water looked perhaps more full of light 
than the fields of sky. 

The brig had set all her canvas. The snowy sails, swelled 
by the strangely soft wind, the labyrinth of cordage, and the 
yellow flags flying at the masthead, all stood out sharp and 
uncompromisingly clear against the vivid background of space, 
sky, and sea; there was nothing to alter the color but the 
shadow cast by the great cloudlike sails. 

A glorious day, a fair wind, and the fatherland in sight, a 
sea like a mill-pond, the melancholy sound of the ripples, a 
fair solitary vessel, gliding across the surface of the water like 
a woman stealing out to a tryst — it was a picture full of har- 
mony. That mere speck full of movement was a starting-point 
whence the soul of man could descry the immutable vastness 
of space. Solitude and bustling life, silence and sound, were 
all brought together in strange abrupt contrast ; you could not 
tell where life, or sound, or silence, and nothingness lay, and 
no human voice broke the divine spell. 

The Spanish captain, the crew, and the French passengers 
sat or stood in a mood of devout ecstasy, in which many 
memories blended. There was idleness in the air. The 
beaming faces told of complete forgetfulness of past hard- 
ships, the men were rocked on the fair vessel as in a golden 
dream. Yet, from time to time the elderly passenger, leaning 
over the bulwark nettings, looked with something like uneasi- 
ness at the horizon. Distrust of the ways of Fate could be read 
in his whole face ; he seemed to fear that he should not reach 
the coast of France in time. This was the marquis. Fortune 
had not been deaf to his despairing cry and struggles. After 
five years of endeavor and painful toil, he was a wealthy man 
once more. In his impatience to reach his home again and 


170 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY . 


to bring the good news to his family, he had followed the 
example set by some French merchants in Havana, and em- 
barked with them on a Spanish vessel with a cargo for Bor- 
deaux. And now, grown tired of evil forebodings, his fancy 
was tracing out for him the most delicious pictures of past 
happiness. In that far-off brown line of land he seemed to 
see his wife and children. He sat in his place by the fireside ; 
they were crowding about him ; he felt their caresses. Moi’na 
had grown to be young girl ; she was beautiful, and tall, and 
striking. The fancied picture had grown almost real, when 
the tears filled his eyes, and, to hide his emotion, he turned 
his face toward the sea-line, opposite the hazy streak that 
meant land. 

“ There she is again She is following us ! ” he said. 

‘‘What?” cried the Spanish captain. 

“ There is a vessel,” muttered the general. 

“I saw her yesterday,” answered Captain Gomez. He 
looked at his interlocutor as if to ask what he thought ; then 
he added, in the general’s ear, “ She has been chasing us all 
along.” 

“ Then why she has not come up with us, I do not know,” 
said the general, “ for she is a faster sailer than your damned 
Saint-Ferdinand.” 

“She will have damaged herself, sprung a leak ” 

“ She is gaining on us 1 ” the general broke in. 

“ She is a Colombian privateer,” the captain said in his 
ear, “ and we are still six leagues from land, and the wind is 
dropping.” 

“ She is not going ahead, she is flying, as if she knew that 
in two hours’ time her prey would escape her. What 
audacity ! ” 

“Audacity ! ” cried the captain. “Oh ! she is not called 
the Othello for nothing. Not so long back she sank a Spanish 
frigate that carried thirty guns ! This is the one thing I was 
afraid of, for I had a notion that she was cruising about some- 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


171 


where off the Antilles. Alia! ” he added after a pause, as 
he watched the sails of his own vessel, “the wind is rising; 
we are making away. Get through we must, for * the Parisian * 
will show us no mercy.” 

“ She is making way, too ! ” returned the general. 

The Othello was scarce three leagues away by this time ; and 
although the conversation between the marquis and Captain 
Gomez had taken place apart, passengers and crew, attracted 
by the sudden appearance of a sail, came to that side of the 
vessel. With scarcely an exception, however, they took the 
privateer for a merchantman, and watched her course with 
interest, till at once a sailor shouted with some energy of 
language — 

“By Saint-Jacques, it is all up with us! Yonder is the 
Parisian captain ! ” 

At that terrible name dismay, and a panic impossible to 
describe, spread through the brig. The Spanish captain’s 
orders put energy into the crew for a while ; and in his reso- 
lute determination to make land at all costs, he set all the 
studding sails and crowded on every stitch of canvas on 
board. But all this was not the work of a moment ; and 
naturally the men did not work together with that wonderful 
unanimity so fascinating to watch on board a man-of-war. 
The Othello meanwhile, thanks to the trimming of her sails, 
flew over the water like a swallow ; but she was making, to all 
appearance, so little headway, that the unlucky Frenchman 
began to entertain sweet delusive hopes. At last, after un- 
heard-of efforts, the Saint-Ferdinand sprang forward, Gomez 
himself directing the shifting of the sheets with voice and 
gesture, when all at once the man at the tiller, steering at 
random (purposely, no doubt), swung the vessel round. The \ 
wind striking athwart the beam, the sails shivered so unex- 
pectedly that the brig heeled to one side, the booms were 
carried away, and the vessel was completely out of hand. 
The captain’s face grew whiter than his sails with unutterable 


172 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


rage. He sprang upon the man at the tiller, drove his dagger 
at him in such blind fury, that he missed him, and hurled the 
weapon overboard. Gomez took the helm himself, and strove 
to right the gallant vessel. Tears of despair rose to his eyes, 
for it is harder to lose the result of our carefully laid plans 
through treachery than to face imminent death. But the 
more the captain swore, the less the men worked, and it was 
he himself who fired the alarm-gun, hoping to be heard on 
shore. The privateer, now gaining hopelessly upon them, re- 
plied with a cannon-shot, which struck the water ten fathoms 
away from the Saint-Ferdinand. 

“Thunder of heaven 1 ” cried the general, “that was a 
close shave ! They must have guns made on purpose.” 

“Oh ! when that one yonder speaks, look you, you have to 
hold your tongue,” said a sailor. “ The Parisian would not 
be afraid to meet an English man-of-war.” 

“ It is all over with us,” the captain cried in desperation ; 
he had pointed his telescope landward, and saw not a sign 
from the shore. “We are further from the coast than I 
thought.” 

“ Why do you despair?” asked the general. “All your 
passengers are Frenchmen ; they have chartered your vessel. 
The privateer is a Parisian, you say? Well and good, run up 
the white flag, and ” 

“ And he would run us down,” retorted the captain. “ He 
can be anything he likes when he has a mind to seize on a 
rich booty ! ” 

“ Oh ! if he is a pirate ” 

“Pirate!” said the ferocious-looking sailor. “Oh! he 
always has the law on his side, or he knows how to be on the 
same side as the law.” 

“Very well,” said the general, raising his eyes, “let us 
make up our minds to it,” and his remaining fortitude was 
still sufficient to keep back the tears. 

The words were hardly out of his mouth before a second 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


173 


cannon-shot, better aimed came crashing through the hull of 
the Saint-Ferdinand. 

“ Heave to ! ” cried the captain gloomily. 

The sailor who had commended the Parisian’s law-abiding 
proclivities showed himself a clever hand at working a ship 
after this desperate order was given. The crew waited for 
half an hour in an agony of suspense and the deepest dismay. 
The Saint-Ferdinand had four millions of piastres on board, 
the whole fortunes of the five passengers, and the general’s 
eleven hundred thousand francs. At length the Othello lay 
not ten gunshots away, so that those on the Saint-Ferdinand 
could look into the muzzles of her loaded guns. The vessel 
seemed to be borne along by a breeze sent by the devil him- 
self, but the eyes of an expert would have discovered the 
secret of her speed at once. You had but to look for a 
moment at the rake of her stern, her long, narrow keel, her 
tall masts, to see the cut of her sails, the wonderful lightness 
of her rigging, and the ease and perfect seamanship with 
which her crew trimmed her sails to the wind. Everything 
about her gave the impression of the security of power in this 
delicately curved inanimate creature, swift and intelligent as 
a greyhound or some bird of prey. The privateer crew stood 
silent, ready in case of resistance to shatter the wretched 
merchantman, which, luckily for her, remained motionless, 
like a schoolboy caught in the act of doing wrong by a master. 

“We have guns on board! ’’cried the general, clutching 
the Spanish captain’s hand. But the courage in Gomez’s 
eyes was the courage of despair. 

“ Have we men ? ” he said. 

The marquis looked round at the crew of the Saint Ferdi- 
nand, and a cold chill ran through him. There stood the 
four merchants, pale and quaking for fear, while the crew 
gathered about some of their own number who appeared to be 
arranging to go over in a body to the enemy. They watched 
the Othello with g.reed and curiosity on their faces. The cap- 


174 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


tain, the marquis, and the mate exchanged glances ; they 
were the only three who had a thought for any but them- 
selves. 

“Ah ! Captain Gomez, when I left my home and country, 
my heart was half dead with the bitterness of parting, and now 
must I bid it good-by once more when I am bringing back 
happiness and ease for my children ? ” 

The general turned his head away toward the sea with tears 
of rage in his eyes — and saw the steersman swimming out to 
the privateer. 

“ This time it will be good-by for good,” said the captain 
by way of answer, and the dazed look in the Spaniard’s 
eyes startled the Frenchman. 

By this time the two vessels were almost alongside, and at 
the first sight of the enemy’s crew the general saw that 
Gomez’s gloomy prophecy was only too true. The three men 
at each gun might have been bronze statues, standing like 
athletes, with their rugged features, their bare, sinewy arms, 
strong men whom Death himself had scarcely thrown off their 
feet. 

The rest of the crew, well armed, active, light, and vigor- 
ous, also stood motionless. Toil had hardened and the sun 
had deeply tanned those energetic faces; their eyes glittered 
like sparks of fire with infernal glee and clear-sighted courage. 
Perfect silence on the upper deck, now black with men, bore 
abundant testimony to the rigorous discipline and strong will 
which held these fiends incarnate in check. 

The captain of the Othello stood with folded arms at the 
foot of the mainmast ; he carried no weapons, but an axe lay 
on the deck beside him. His face was hidden by the shadow 
of a broad, felt hat. The men looked like dogs crouching 
before their master. Gunners, soldiers, and ship’s crew 
turned their eyes first on his face and then on the merchant 
vessel. 

The two brigs came up alongside, and the shock of contact 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


175 


roused the privateer captain from his musings ; he spoke a 
word in the ear of the lieutenant who stood beside him. 

“Grappling irons!” shouted the latter, and the Othello 
grappled the Saint-Ferdinand with miraculous quickness. 
The captain of the privateer gave his orders in a low voice 
to the lieutenant, who repeated them ; the men, told off in 
succession for each duty, went on the upper deck of the Saint- 
Ferdinand, like seminarists going to mass. They bound crew 
and passengers hand and foot and seized the booty. In the 
twinkling of an eye, provisions and barrels full of piastres 
were transferred to the Othello ; the general thought that he 
must be dreaming when he himself, likewise bound, was flung 
down on a bale of goods as if he had been part of the cargo. 

A brief conference took place between the captain of the 
privateer and his lieutenant and a sailor, who seemed to be 
the mate of the vessel ; then the mate gave a whistle, and the 
men jumped on board the Saint-Ferdinand and completely 
dismantled her with the nimble dexterity of a soldier who 
strips a dead comrade of a coveted overcoat and shoes. 

“It is all over with us,” said the Spanish captain coolly. 
He had eyed the three chiefs during their confabulation, and 
saw that the sailors were proceeding to pull his vessel to 
pieces. 

“ Why so? ” asked the general. 

“What would you have them do with us?” returned the 
Spaniard. “They have just come to the conclusion that they 
will scarcely sell the Saint-Ferdinand in any French or Spanish 
port, so they are going to sink her to be rid of her. And as 
for us, do you suppose that they will put themselves to the 
expense of feeding us, when they don’t know what port they 
are to put into ? ” 

The words were scarcely out of the captain’s mouth before a 
hideous outcry went up, followed by a dull splashing sound, 
as several bodies were thrown overboard. He turned, the 
four merchants were no longer to be seen, but eight ferocious- 


176 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


looking gunners were still standing with their arms raised 
above their heads. He shuddered. 

“What did I tell you?” the Spanish captain asked very 
coolly. 

The marquis rose to his feet with a spring. The surface of 
the sea was quite smooth again ; he could not so much as see 
the place where his unhappy fellow-passengers had disappeared. 
By this time they were sinking down, bound hand and foot, 
below the waves, if, indeed, the fish had not devoured them 
already. 

Only a few paces away, the treacherous steersman and the 
sailor who had boasted of the Parisian’s power were fraterniz- 
ing with the crew of the Othello, and pointing out those 
among their own number who, in their opinion, were worthy 
to join the crew of the privateer. Then the boys tied the rest 
together by the feet in spite of frightful oaths. It was soon 
over; the eight gunners seized the doomed men and flung 
them overboard without more ado, watching the different 
ways in which the drowning victims met their death, their 
contortions, their last agony, with a sort of malignant curi- 
osity, but with no sign of amusement, surprise, or pity. For 
them it was an ordinary event to which seemingly they were 
quite accustomed. The older men looked instead with grim, 
set smiles at the casks of piastres about the mainmast. 

The general and Captain Gomez, left seated on a bale of 
goods, consulted each other with well-nigh hopeless looks ; they 
were, in a sense, the sole survivors of the Saint-Ferdinand, for 
the seven men pointed out by the spies were transformed amid 
rejoicings into Peruvians. 

“What atrocious villains! ” the general cried. Loyal and 
generous indignation silenced prudence and pain on his own 
account. 

“They do it because they must,” Captain Gomez answered 
coolly. “ If you came across one of those fellows, you would 
run him through the body, would you not?” 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


177 


The lieutenant now came up to the Spaniard. 

“Captain,” said he, “the Parisian has heard of you. He 
says that you are the only man who really knows the passages 
of the Antilles and the Brazilian coast. Will you ” 

The captain cut him sort with a scornful exclamation. 

“ I shall die like a sailor,” he said, “and a loyal Spaniard 
and a Christian. Do you hear?” 

“Heave him overboard,” shouted the lieutenant, and a 
couple of gunners seized on Gomez. 

“You cowards!” roared the general, seizing hold of the 
men. 

“Don’t get too excited, old boy,” said the lieutenant. 
“ If your red ribbon has made some impression upon our cap- 
tain, I myself do not care a rap for it. You and I will have 
our little bit of talk together directly.” 

A smothered sound, with no accompanying cry, told the 
general that the gallant captain had died “like a sailor,” as 
he had said. 

“ My money or death ! ” cried the marquis, in a fit of rage 
terrible to see. 

“Ah! now you talk sensibly!” sneered the lieutenant. 
“ That is the way to get something out of us ” 

Two of the men came up at a sign and hastened to bind 
the Frenchman’s feet, but with unlooked-for boldness he 
snatched the lieutenant’s cutlass and laid about him like a 
cavalry officer who knows his business. 

“Brigands that you are ! You shall not chuck one of Na- 
poleon’s old troopers over a ship’s side like an oyster ! ” 

At the sound of pistol-shots fired point-blank at the French- 
man, “the Parisian” looked round from his occupation of 
superintending the transfer of the rigging from the Saint- 
Ferdinand. He came up behind the brave general, seized 
him, dragged him to the side, and was about to fling him 
over with no more concern than if the man had been a 
broken spar. They were at the very edge when the general 
12 


178 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


looked into the tawny eyes of the man who had stolen his 
daughter. The recognition was mutual. 

The captain of the privateer, his arm still upraised, suddenly 
swung it in the contrary direction as if his victim was but a 
feather weight, and set him down at the foot of the main- 
mast. A murmur rose on the upper deck, but the captain 
glanced round, and there was a sudden silence. 

“This is Helene’s father,” said the captain in a clear, firm 
voice. “Woe to any one who meddles with him ! ” 

A hurrah of joy went up at the words, a shout rising to the 
sky like a prayer of the church ; a cry like the first high-notes 
of the Te Deum. The lads swung aloft in the rigging, the 
men below flung up their caps, the gunners pounded away on 
the deck, there was a general thrill of excitement, an outburst 
of oaths, yells, and shrill cries in voluble chorus. The men 
cheered like fanatics, the general’s misgivings deepened, and 
he grew uneasy ; it seemed to him that there was some hor- 
rible mystery in such wild transports. 

“My daughter!” he cried, as soon as he could speak. 
“ Where is my daughter? ” 

For all answer, the captain of the privateer gave him a 
searching glance, one of those glances which throw the bravest 
men into a confusion which no theory can explain. The 
general was mute, not a little to the satisfaction of the crew ; 
it pleased them to see their leader exercise the strange power 
which he possessed over all with whom he came in contact. 
Then the captain led the way down a staircase and flung open 
the door of a cabin. 

“There she is,” he said, and disappeared, leaving the 
general in a stupor of bewilderment at the scene before his 
eyes. 

Helene cried out at the sight of him, and sprang up from 
the sofa on which she was lying when the door flew open. So 
changed was she that none but a father’s eyes could have 
recognized her. The sun of the tropics had brought warmer 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


179 


tones into the once pale face, and something of Oriental 
charm with that wonderful coloring ; there was a certain gran- 
deur about her, a majestic firmness, a profound sentiment 
which impresses itself upon the coarsest nature. Her long, 
thick hair, falling in large curls about her queenly throat, 
gave an added idea of power to the proud face. The con- 
sciousness of that power shone out from every movement, 
every line of Helene’s form. The rose-tinted nostrils were 
dilated slightly with the joy of triumph ; the serene happiness 
of her life had left its plain tokens in the full development of 
her beauty. A certain indefinable virginal grace met in her 
with the pride of a woman who is loved. This was a slave 
and a queen, a queen who would fain obey that she might 
reign. 

Her dress was magnificent and elegant in its richness ; India 
muslin was the sole material, but her sofa and cushions were 
of cashmere. A Persian carpet covered the floor in the large 
cabin, and her four children playing at her feet were building 
castles of gems and pearl necklaces and jewels of price. The 
air was full of the scent of rare flowers in Sevres porcelain 
vases painted by Mme. Jacotot ; tiny South American birds, 
like living rubies, sapphires, and gold, hovered among the 
Mexican jessamines and camellias. A pianforte had been 
fitted into the room, and here and there on the paneled 
walls, covered with red silk, hung small pictures by great 
painters — a Sunset by Hippolyte Schinner beside a Terburg, 
one of Raphael’s Madonnas scarcely yielded in charm to a 
sketch by Gericault, while a Gerard Dow eclipsed the painters 
of the Empire. On a lacquered table stood a golden plate 
full of delicious fruit. Indeed, Helene might have been the 
sovereign lady of some great country, and this cabin of hers a 
boudoir in which her crowned lover had brought together all 
earth’s treasures to please his consort. The children gazed 
with bright, keen eyes at their grandfather. Accustomed as 
they were to a life of battle, storm, and tumult, they recalled 


180 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


the Roman children in David’s Brutus, watching the fighting 
and bloodshed with curious interest. 

“ What ! is it possible? ” cried Helene, catching her father’s 
arm as if to assure herself that this was no vision. 

“ Helene ! ” 

“ Father ! ” 

They fell into each other’s arms, and the old man's em- 
brace was not so close and warm as Helene’s. 

“ Were you on board that vessel? ” 

“ Yes,” he answered sadly, and looking at the little ones, 
who gathered about him and gazed with wide-open eyes. 

“I was about to perish, but ” 

“ But for my husband,” she broke in. “I see how it was.” 

“Ah!” cried the general, “why must I find you again 
like this, Helene? After all the many tears that I have shed, 
must I still groan for your fate? ” 

“And why?” she asked smiling. “Why should you be 
sorry to learn that I am the happiest woman under the sun ? ’ ’ 

“Happy?” he cried, with a start of surprise. 

“Yes, happy, my kind father,” and she caught his hands 
in hers and covered them with kisses, and pressed them to her 
throbbing heart. Her caresses and a something in the car- 
riage of her head were interpreted yet more plainly by the 
joy sparkling in her eyes. 

“ And how is this? ” he asked, wondering at his daughter’s 
life, forgetful now of everything but the bright glowing face 
before him. 

“Listen, father, I have for lover, husband, servant, and 
master one whose soul is as great as the boundless sea, as in- 
finite in his kindness as heaven, a god on earth ! Never 
during these seven years has a chance look, or word, or ges- 
ture jarred in the divine harmony of his talk, his love, his 
caresses. His eyes have never met mine without a gleam of 
happiness in them; there has always been a bright smile on 
his lips for me. On deck, his voice rises above the thunder 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


183 


of storms and the tumult of battle ; but here below it is soft 
and melodious as Rossini’s music — for he has Rossini’s music 
sent for me. I have everything that woman’s caprice can 
imagine. My wishes are more than fulfilled. In short, I am 
a queen on the seas \ I am obeyed here as perhaps a queen 
may be obeyed. Ah!” she cried, interrupting herself, 
“ happy did I say? Happiness is no word to express such 
bliss as mine. All the happiness that should have fallen to 
all the women in the world has been my share. Knowing 
one’s ow r n great love and self-devotion, to find in his heart an 
infinite love in which a woman’s soul is lost, and lost for ever 
— tell me, is this happiness? I have lived through a thousand 
lives even now. Here, I am alone ; here I command. No 
other woman has set foot on this noble vessel, and Victor is 
never more than a few paces distant from me, he cannot 
wander further from me than from stern to prow,” she added, 
with a shade of mischief in her manner. “ Seven years ! A 
love that outlasts seven years of continual joy, that endures 
all the tests brought by all the moments that make up seven 
years — is this love? Oh, no, no ! it is something better than 

all that I know of life human language fails to express 

the bliss of heaven.” 

A sudden torrent of tears fell from her burning eyes. The 
four little ones raised a piteous cry at this, and flocked like 
chickens about their mother. The oldest boy struck the 
general with a threatening look. 

“Abel, darling,” said Helene, “lam crying for joy.” 

Helene took him on her knee, and the child fondled her, 
putting his arms about her queenly neck, as a lion’s whelp 
might play with the lioness. 

“Do you never weary of your life?” asked the general, • 
bewildered by his daughter’s enthusiastic language. 

“Yes,” she said, “sometimes, when we are on land, yet 
even then I have never parted from my husband.” 

“ But you used to be fond of music and balls and fetes.” 


182 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY, 


“ His voice is music for me ; and for fetes, I devise new 
toilets for him to see. When he likes my dress, it is as if all 
the world admired me. Simply for that reason I keep the 
diamonds and jewels, the precious things, the flowers and 
masterpieces of art that he heaps upon me, saying, ‘ Helene, 
as you live out of the world, I will have the world come to 
you.’ But for that I would fling them all overboard.” 

“ But there are others on board, wild, reckless men, whose 
passions ” 

“I understand, father,” she said, smiling. ‘‘Do not fear 
for me. Never was empress encompassed with more obser- 
vance than I. The men are very superstitious; they look 
upon me as a sort of tutelary genius, the luck of the vessel. 
But he is their god ; they worship him. Once, and once only, 
one of the crew showed disrespect, mere words,” she added, 
laughing; “but before Victor knew of it, the others flung 
the offender overboard, although I forgave him. They love 
me as their good angel; I nurse them when they are ill; 
several times I have been so fortunate as to save a life, by con- 
stant care such as a woman can give. Poor fellows, they are 
giants, but they are children at the same time.” 

“And when there is fighting overhead?” 

“I am used to it now; I quaked for fear during the first 
engagement, but never since. I am used to such peril, and — 
I am your daughter,” she said ; “ I love it.” 

“ But how if he should fall?” 

“I should die with him.” 

“ And your children ? ” 

“They are children of the sea and of danger; they share 
the life of their parents. We have but one life, and we do 
not flinch from it. We have but the one life, our names are 
written on the same page of the book of Fate, one skiff bears 
us and our fortunes, and we know it.” 

“ Do you so love him that he is more to you than all 
beside ? ” 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


183 


“All beside ?” echoed she. “ Let us leave that mystery 
alone. Yet stay ! there is this dear little one — well, this too 
is he" and straining Abel to her in a tight clasp, she set eager 
kisses on his cheeks and hair. 

“ But I can never forget that he has just drowned nine 
men ! ” exclaimed the general. 

“ There was no help for it, doubtless,” she said, “ for he is 
generous and humane. He sheds as little blood as may be, 
and only in the interests of the little world which he defends 
and the sacred cause for which he is fighting. Talk to him 
about anything that seems to you to be wrong, and he will 
convince you, you will see.” 

“There was that crime of his,” muttered the general to 
himself. 

“But how if that crime was a virtue?” she asked, with 
cold dignity. “ How if man’s justice had failed to avenge a 
great wrong ? ’ ’ 

“ But a private revenge ! ” exclaimed her father. 

“ But what is hell,” she cried, “ but a revenge through all 
eternity for the wrong done in a little day? ” 

“ Ah ! you are lost ! He has bewitched and perverted you. 
You are talking wildly.” 

“ Stay with us one day, father, and if you will but listen to 
him, and see him, you will love him.” 

“Helene, France lies only a few leagues away,” he said 
gravely. 

Helene trembled ; then she went over to the port-hole and 
pointed to the savannas of green water spreading far and wide 
before them. 

“There lies my country,” she said, tapping the carpet with 
her foot. 

“ But are you not coming with me to see your mother and 
your sister and brothers ? ” 

“Oh ! yes,” she cried, with tears in her voice, “ if he is 
willing, if he will come with me.” 


184 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


“ So,” the general said sternly, “ you have neither country 
nor kin now, Helene ? ” 

“I am his wife,” she answered proudly, and there was 
something very noble in her tone. “This is the first happi- 
ness in seven years that has not come to me through him,” 
she said — then, as she caught her father’s hand and kissed it — 
“ and this is the first word of reproach that I have heard.” 

“ And your conscience ? ” 

“ My conscience ; he is my conscience ! ” she cried, trem- 
bling from head to foot. “ Here he is ! Even in the thick 
of a fight. I can tell his footstep among all the others on deck,” 
she cried. 

A sudden crimson flushed her cheeks and glowed in her 
features, her eyes lighted up, her complexion changed to vel- 
vet whiteness ; there was joy and love in every fibre, in the 
blue veins, in the unconscious trembling of her whole frame. 
That quiver of the sensitive plant softened the general. 

It was as she had said. The captain came in, sat down in 
an easy-chair, took up his oldest boy, and began to play with 
him. There was a moment’s silence, for the general’s deep 
musing had grown vague and dreamy, and the daintily fur- 
nished cabin and the playing children seemed like a nest of 
halcyons, floating on the waves, between sky and sea, safe in 
the protection of this man who steered his way amid perils 
of war and tempest, as other heads of households guide those 
in their care among the hazards of common life. He gazed 
admiringly at Helene — a dreamlike vision of some sea goddess, 
gracious in her loveliness, rich in happiness ; all the treasures 
about her grown poor in comparison with the wealth of her 
nature, paling before the brightness of her eyes, the indefinable 
romance expressed in her and her surroundings. 

The strangeness of the situation took the general by sur- 
prise ; the ideas of ordinary life were thrown into confusion 
by this lofty passion and reasoning. Chill and narrow social 
conventions faded away before this picture. All these things 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


185 


the old soldier felt, and saw no less how impossible it was that 
his daughter should give up so wide a life, a life so variously 
rich, filled to the full with such passionate love. And Helene 
had tasted danger without shrinking ; how could she return 
to the petty stage, the superficial circumscribed life of society ? 

It was the captain who broke the silence at last. 

“Am I in the way?” he asked, looking at his wife. 

“No,” said the general, answering for her. “Helene has 
told me all. I see that she is lost to us ” 

“No,” the captain put in quickly; “in a few years’ time 
the statute of limitations will allow me to go back to France. 
When the conscience is clear, and a man has broken the law 

in obedience to ” he stopped short, as if scorning to justify 

himself. 

“ How can you commit new murders, such as I have seen 
with my own eyes, without remorse?” 

“We had no provisions,” the privateer captain retorted 
calmly. 

“ But if you had set the men ashore ” 

“They would have given the alarm and sent a man-of-war 
after us, and we should never have seen Chili [Peru] again.” 

“ Before France would have given warning to the Spanish 
admiralty ” began the general. 

“But France might take it amiss that a man, with a warrant 
still out against him, should seize a brig chartered by Bordeaux 
merchants. And for that matter, have you never fired a shot 
or so too many in battle ? ” 

The general shrank under the other’s eyes. He said no 
more, and his daughter looked at him half-sadly, half-trium- 
phantly. 

“General,” the privateer continued, in a deep voice, “I 
have made it a rule to abstract nothing from booty. But 
even so, my share will, beyond a doubt, be far larger than 
your fortune. Permit me to return it to you in another 
form ” 


G 


186 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


He drew a pile of bank-notes from the piano, and with, 
out counting the packets handed a million of francs to the 
marquis. 

“ You can understand,” he said, “ that I cannot spend my 
time in watching vessels pass by to Bordeaux. So unless the 
dangers of this Bohemian life of ours have some attraction for 
you, unless you care to see South America and the nights of 
the tropics, and a bit of fighting now and again for the pleas- 
ure of helping to win a triumph for a young nation, or for the 
name of Simon Bolivar, we must part. The long-boat, manned 
with a trustworthy crew, is ready for you. And now let us 
hope that our third meeting will be completely happy.” 

“ Victor,” said Helene in a dissatisfied tone, “I should 
like to see a little more of my father.” 

“Ten minutes more or less may bring up a French frigate. 
However, so be it, we shall have a little fun. The men find 
things dull.” 

“Oh, father, go!” cried Helene, “and take these keep- 
sakes from me to my sister and brothers and — mother,” she 
added. She caught up a handful of jewels and precious 
stones, folded them in an Indian shawl, and timidly held it 
out. 

“But what shall I say to them from you?” asked he. 
Her hesitation on the word “mother” seemed to have struck 
him. 

“ Oh ! can you doubt me ? I pray for their happiness every 
day.” 

“ Helene,” he began, as he watched her closely, “how if 
we should not meet again ? Shall I never know why you left 
us?” 

“That secret is not mine,” she answered gravely. “Even 
if I had the right to tell it, perhaps I should not. For ten 
years I was more miserable than words can say——-” 

She broke off, and gave her father the presents for her 
family* The general had acquired tolerably easy view§ as tq 









A VAST COLUMN OF SMOKE RISING SPREAD LIKE 


BROWN CLOUD. 



A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


187 


booty in the course of a soldier’s career, so he took Helene’s 
gifts and comforted himself with the reflection that the Parisian 
captain was sure to wage war against the Spaniards as an hon- 
orable man, under the influence of Helene’s pure and high- 
minded nature. His passion for courage carried all before it. 
It was ridiculous, he thought, to be squeamish in the matter; 
so he shook hands cordially with his captor, and kissed Helene, 
his only daughter, with a soldier’s expansiveness ; letting fall 
a tear on the face with the proud, strong look that once he 
had loved to see. ‘‘The Parisian,” deeply moved, brought 
the children for his blessing. The parting was over, the last 
good-by was a long farewell-look, with something of tender 
regret on either side. 

A strange sight to seaward met the general’s eyes. The 
Saint-Ferdinand was blazing like a huge bonfire. The men 
told off to sink the Spanish brig had found a cargo of rum 
on board ; and, as the Othello was already amply supplied, 
had lighted a floating bowl of punch on the high-seas, by way 
of a joke; a pleasantry pardonable enough in sailors, who 
hail any chance excitement as a relief from the apparent 
monotony of life at sea. As the general went over the side 
into the long-boat of the Saint-Ferdinand, manned by six 
vigorous rowers, he could not help looking at the burning 
vessel, as well as at the daughter who stood by her husband’s 
side on the stern of the Othello. He saw Helene’s white 
dress flutter like one more sail in the breeze; he saw the tall, 
noble figure against a background of sea, queenly still even 
in the presence of Ocean ; and so many memories crowded 
up in his mind, that, with a soldier’s recklessness of life, he 
forgot that he was being borne over the grave of the brave 
Gomez. 

A vast column of smoke rising spread like a brown cloud, 
pierced here and there by fantastic shafts of sunlight. It was 
a second sky, a murky dome reflecting the glow of the fire as 


188 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


if the under surface had been burnished; but above it soared 
the unchanging blue of the firmament, a thousand times fairer 
for the short-lived contrast. The strange hues of the smoke- 
cloud, black and red, tawny and pale by turns, blurred and 
blending into each other, shrouded the burning vessel as it 
flared, crackled, and groaned; the hissing tongues of flame 
licked up the rigging and flashed across the hull, like a rumor 
of riot flashing along the streets of a city. The burning rum 
sent up blue flitting lights. Some sea god might have been 
stirring the furious liquor as a student stirs the joyous flames 
of punch in an orgie. But in the overpowering sunlight, 
jealous of the insolent blaze, the colors were scarcely visible, 
and the smoke was but a film fluttering like a thin scarf in 
the noonday torrent of light and heat. 

The Othello made the most of the little wind she could gain 
to fly on her new course. Swaying first to one side, then to 
the other, like a stag-beetle on the wing, the fair vessel beat to 
windward on her zigzag flight to the south. Sometimes she 
was hidden from sight by the straight column of smoke that 
flung fantastic shadows across the water, then gracefully she 
shot out clear of it, and Helene, catching sight of her father, 
again waved her handkerchief for yet one more farewell greet- 
ing. 

A few more minutes, and the Saint-Ferdinand went down 
with a bubbling turmoil, at once effaced by the ocean. Noth- 
ing of all that had been was left but a smoke-cloud hanging 
in the breeze. The Othello was far away, the long-boat had 
almost reached land, the cloud came between the frail skiff 
and the brig, and it was through a break in the swaying smoke 
that the general caught the last glimpse of Helene. A pro- 
phetic vision ! Her dress and her white handkerchief stood 
out against the murky background. Then the brig was not 
even visible between the green water and the blue sky, and 
Helene was nothing but an imperceptible speck, a faint grace- 
ful line, an angel in heaven, a mental image, a memory. 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


189 


The marquis had retrieved his fortunes, when he died, worn 
out with toil. A few months after his death, in 1833, the 
marquise was obliged to take Moi'na to a watering-place in the 
Pyrenees, for the capricious child had a wish to see the beauti- 
ful mountain scenery. They left the baths, and the following 
tragical incident occurred on their way home. 

“ Dear me, mother,” said MoTna, “ it was very foolish of us 
not to stay among the mountains a few days longer. It was 
much nicer there. Did you hear that horrid child moaning 
all night, and that wretched woman, gabbling away in patois 
no doubt, for I could not understand a single word she said. 
What kind of people can they have put in the next room to 
ours? This is one of the most horrid nights I have ever spent 
in my life.” 

‘‘I heard nothing,” said the marquise, “but I will see the 
landlady, darling, and engage the next room, and then we 
shall have the whole suite of rooms to ourselves, and there 
will be no more noise. How do you feel this morning ? 
Are you tired ? ” 

As she spoke, the marquise rose and went to Moina’s 
bedside. 

“Let us see,” she said, feeling for the girl’s hand. 

“Oh! let me alone, mother,” said Moina; “your fingers 
are cold.” 

She turned her head round on the pillow as she spoke, pet- 
tishly, but with such engaging grace, that a mother could 
scarcely have taken it amiss. Just then a wailing cry echoed 
through the next room, a faint prolonged cry, that must surely 
have gone to the heart of any woman who heard it. 

“ Why, if you heard that all night long, why did you not 
wake me? We should have ” 

A deeper moan than any that had gonebefore it interrupted 
the marquise. 

“Some one is dying there,” she cried, and hurried out of 
the room. 


190 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


“Send Pauline to me!” called Mo'ina. “I shall get up 
and dress.” 

The marquise hastened downstairs, and found the landlady 
in the courtyard with a little group of people about her, 
apparently much interested in something that she was telling 
them. 

“Madame, you have put some one in the next room who 
seems to be very ill indeed ” 

“ Oh ! don’t talk to me about it ! ” cried the mistress of the 
house. “I have just sent some one for the mayor. Just 
imagine it ; it is a woman, a poor unfortunate creature that 
came here last night on foot. She comes from Spain ; she 
has no passport and no money ; she was carrying her baby 
on her back, and the child was dying. I could not refuse 
to take her in. I went up to see her this morning myself ; 
for when she turned up yesterday, it made me feel dread- 
fully bad to look at her. Poor soul ! she and the child 
were lying in bed, and both of them at death’s door. 

* Madame,’ says she, pulling a gold ring off her finger, 

* this is all that I have left ; take, it in payment, it will be 
enough ; I shall not stay here long. Poor little one ! we 
shall die together soon ! ’ she said, looking at the child. I 
took her ring, and I asked her who she was, but she never 
would tell me her name. I have just sent for the doctor 
and Monsieur le Maire.” 

“Why you must do all that can be done for her,” cried 
the marquise. “ Good heavens ! perhaps it is not too late ! 1 
will pay for everything that is necessary ” 

“ Ah ! my lady, she looks to me to be uncommonly proud, 
and I don’t know that she would allow it.” 

“ I will go to see her at once.” 

The marquise went up forthwith to the stranger’s room, 
without thinking of the shock that the sight of her widow’s 
weeds might give to a woman who was said to be dying. At 
the sight of that dying woman the marquise turned pale. In 


A WOMAAT OF THIRTY. 


191 


spite of the changes wrought by fearful suffering in Helene’s 
beautiful face, she recognized her eldest daughter. 

But Helene, when she saw a woman dressed in black, sat 
upright in bed with a shriek of horror. Then she sank back; 
she knew her mother. 

“ My daughter,” said Mme. d’Aiglemont, “what is to be 

done? Pauline! Mo'ina ! ” 

“Nothing now for me,” said Helene faintly. “I had 

hoped to see my father once more, but your mourning ” 

she broke off, clutched her child to her heart as if to give it 
warmth, and kissed its forehead. Then she turned her eyes 
on her mother, and the marquise met the old reproach in 
them, tempered with forgiveness, it is true, but still reproach. 
She saw it, and would not see it. She forgot that Helene 
w r as the child conceived amid tears and despair, the child of 
duty, the cause of one of the greatest sorrows in her life. 
She stole to her eldest daughter’s side, remembering nothing 
but that Helene was her firstborn, the child who had taught 
her to know the joys of motherhood. The mother’s eyes 

were full of tears. “ Helene, my child ! ” she cried, 

with her arms about her daughter. 

Helene was silent. Her own babe had just drawn its last 
breath on her breast. 

MoTna came into the room with Pauline, her maid, and 
the landlady and the doctor. The marquise was holding her 
daughter’s ice-cold hand in both of hers, and gazing at her 
in despair; but the widowed woman, who had escaped ship- 
wreck with but one of all her fair band of children, spoke in 
a voice that was dreadful to hear. “All this is your work,” 

she said. “ If you had but been for me, all that ” 

“Mo’ina, go! Go out of the room, all of you!” cried 
Mme. d’Aiglemont, her shrill tone drowning Helene’s voice. 
“For pity’s sake,” she continued, “let us not begin these 

miserable quarrels again now ” 

“I will be silent,” Helene answered with a preternatural 


192 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


effort. “I am a mother, I know that Mo'ina ought not, 
must not Where is my child ? ” 

Mo’ina came back, impelled by curiosity. 

“Sister,” said the spoilt child, “the doctor ” 

“ It is all of no use,” said Helene. “ Oh ! why did I not 
die as a girl of sixteen when I meant to take my own life? 

There can be no happiness outside the laws. Mo'ina 

you ” 

Her head sank till her face lay against the face of the little 
one ; in her agony she strained her babe to her breast, and 
died. 

“Your sister, MoTna,” said Mme. d’Aiglemont, bursting 
into tears when she reached her room, “ your sister meant no 
doubt to tell you that a girl will never find happiness in a 
romantic life, in living as nobody else does, and, above all 
things, far away from her mother.” 



VI. 


THE OLD AGE OF A GUILTY MOTHER. 

It was one of the earliest June days of the year 1844. 
A lady of fifty or thereabout, for she looked older than her 
actual age, was pacing up and down one of the sunny paths 
in the garden of a great mansion in the Rue Plumet in Paris. 
It was noon. The lady took two or three turns along the 
gently winding garden-walk, careful never to lose sight of a cer- 
tain row of windows, to which she seemed to give her whole 
attention ; then she sat down on a bench, a piece of elegant 
semi-rusticity made of branches with the bark left on the 
wood. From the place where she sat she could look through 
the garden railings along the inner boulevards to the wonder- 
ful dome of the Invalides rising above the crests of a forest 
of elm-trees, and see the less striking view of her own grounds 
terminating in the gray-stone front of one of the finest hotels 
in the Faubourg Saint-Germain. 

Silence lay over the neighboring gardens and the boule- 
vards stretching away to the Invalides. Day scarcely begins 
at noon in that aristocratic quarter, and masters and servants 
are all alike asleep, or just awakening, unless some young lady 
takes it into her head to go for an early ride, or a gray-headed 
diplomatist rises betimes to redraft a protocol. 

The elderly lady stirring abroad at that hour was the Mar- 
quise d’Aiglemont, the mother of Mme. de Saint-Hereen, to 
whom the great house belonged. The marquise had made 
over the mansion and almost her whole fortune to her daugh- 
ter, reserving only an annuity for herself. 

The Comtesse Mo'ina de Saint-Hereen was Mme. d’Aigle- 
mont’s youngest child. The marquise had made every sacri- 
fice to marry her daughter to the eldest son of one of the 
13 ( 193 ) 


194 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


greatest houses of France ; and this was only what might have 
been expected, for the lady had lost her sons, first one and 
then the other. Gustave, Marquis d’Aiglemont, had died of 
the cholera ; Abel, the second, had fallen in Algeria. Gus- 
tave had left a widow and children, but the dowager’s affec- 
tion for her sons had been only moderately warm, and for the 
next generation it was decidedly tepid. She was always civil 
to her daughter-in-law, but her feeling toward the young mar- 
quise was the distinctly conventional affection which good 
taste and good manners require us to feel for our relatives. 
The fortunes of her dead children having been settled, she 
could devote her savings and her own property to her darling 
Mo’ina. 

MoTna, beautiful and fascinating from childhood, was Mme. 
d’Aiglemont’s favorite ; loved beyond all the others with an 
instinctive or involuntary love, a fatal drawing of the heart, 
which sometimes seems inexplicable, sometimes, and to a close 
observer, only too easy to explain. Her darling’s pretty face, 
the sound of Mo'fna’s voice, her ways, her manner, her looks 
and gestures, roused all the deepest emotions that can stir a 
mother’s heart with trouble, rapture, or delight. The springs 
of the marquise’s life, of yesterday, to-morrow, and to-day, 
lay in that young heart. MoTna, with better fortune, had 
survived four older children. As a matter of fact, Mme. 
d’Aiglemont had lost her eldest daughter, a charming girl, in 
a most unfortunate manner, said gossip, nobody knew exactly 
what became of her ; and then she lost a little boy of five by 
a dreadful accident. 

The child of her affections had, however, been spared to 
her, and doubtless the marquise saw the will of heaven in that 
fact ; for of those who had died, she kept but very shadowy 
recollections in some far-off corner of her heart ; her mem- 
ories of her dead children were like the headstones on a battle- 
field, you can scarcely see them for the flowers that have 
sprung up about them since. Of course, if the world had 


A IV OMAN OF THIRTY. 


195 


chosen, it might have said some hard truths about the mar- 
quise, might have taken her to task for shallowness and an 
overweening preference for one child at the expense of the 
rest ; but the world of Paris is swept along by the full flood 
of new events, new ideas, and new fashions, and it was inevi- 
table that Mme. d’Aiglemont should be in some sort allowed 
to drop out of sight. So nobody thought of blaming her for 
coldness or neglect which concerned no one, whereas her 
quick, apprehensive tenderness for Moina was found highly 
interesting by not a few who respected it as a sort of supersti- 
tion. Beside, the marquise scarcely went into society at all ; 
and the few families who knew her thought of her as a kindly, 
gentle, indulgent woman, wholly devoted to her family. 
What but a curiosity, keen indeed, would seek to pry beneath 
the surface with which the world is quite satisfied ? And what 
would we not pardon to old people, if only they will efface 
themselves like shadows, and consent to be regarded as mem- 
ories and nothing more ! 

Indeed, Mme. d’Aiglemont became a kind of example 
complacently held up by the younger generation to fathers of 
families, and frequently cited to mothers-in-law. She had 
made over her property to Moina in her own lifetime; the 
young countess’ happiness was enough for her, she only lived 
in her daughter. If some cautious old person or morose 
uncle here and there condemned the course with — “Perhaps 
Madame d’Aiglemont may be sorry some day that she gave 
up her fortune to her daughter ; she may be sure of Mo'ina, 
but how can she be equally sure of her son-in-law ? " — these 
prophets were cried down on all sides, and from all sides a 
chorus of praise went up for Mo'ina. 

“ It ought to be said, in justice to Madame de Saint-Hereen, 
that her mother cannot feel the slightest difference,’' re 
marked a young married woman. “ Madame d’Aiglemont is 
admirably well housed. She has a carriage at her disposal, 
and can go everywhere just as she used to do ” 


196 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


“Except to the Italiens,” remarked a low voice. (This 
was an elderly parasite, one of those persons who show their 
independence — as they think — by riddling their friends with 
epigrams.) “Except to the Italiens. And if the dowager 
cares for anything on this earth but her daughter — it is music. 
Such a good performer she was in her time ! But the coun- 
tess’ box is always full of young butterflies, and the countess’ 
mother would be in the way ; the young lady is talked about 
already as a great flirt. So the poor mother never goes to the 
Italiens.” 

“Madame de Saint-Hereen has delightful ‘At Homes* 
for her mother,” said a rosebud. “All Paris goes to her 
salon.* * 

“And no one pays any attention to the marquise,” returned 
the parasite. 

“The fact is that Madame d’Aiglemont is never alone,” 
remarked a coxcomb, siding with the young women. 

“In the morning,” the old observer continued in a discreet 
voice, “ in the morning dear Mo'ina is asleep. At four o’clock 
dear Mofna drives in the Bois. In the evening dear Moi'na 
goes to a ball or to the Boufles. Still, it is certainly true that 
Madame d’Aiglemont has the privilege of seeing her dear 
daughter while she dresses, and again at dinner, if dear 
Mo'ina happens to dine with her mother. Not a week ago, 
sir,” continued the elderly person, laying his hand on the 
arm of the shy tutor, a new arrival in the house, “not a week 
ago, I saw the poor mother, solitary and sad, by her own fire- 
side. ‘ What is the matter ? * I asked. The marquise looked 
up smiling, but I am quite sure that she had been crying. 
‘ I was thinking that it is a strange thing that I should be left 
alone when I have had five children,* she said, ‘but that is our 
destiny ! And, beside, I am happy when I know that Mofna 
is enjoying herself.* She could say that to me, for I knew 
her husband when he was alive. A poor stick he was, and 
uncommonly lucky to have such a wife ; it was certainly 


A WOMAN’ OF THIRTY. 


197 


owing to her that he was made a peer of France, and had a 
place at Court under Charles X.” 

Yet such mistaken ideas get about in social gossip, and such 
mischief is done by it, that the historian of manners is bound 
to exercise his discretion, and weigh the assertions so reck- 
lessly made. After all, who is to say that either mother or 
daughter was right or wrong. There is but One who can read 
and judge their hearts ! And how often does He wreak His 
vengeance in the family circle, using throughout all time chil- 
dren as his instruments against their mothers, and fathers 
against their sons, raising up peoples against kings, and princes 
against peoples, sowing strife and division everywhere? And 
in the world of ideas, are not old opinions and feelings ex- 
pelled by new feelings and opinions, much as withered leaves 
are thrust forth by the young leaf-buds in the spring? — all in 
obedience to the immutable Scheme ; all to some end which 
God alone knows. Yet, surely, all things proceed to Him, 
or rather, to Him all things return. 

Such thoughts of religion, the natural thoughts of age, 
floated up now and again on the current of Mme. d’Aiglemont’s 
thoughts ; they were always dimly present in her mind, but 
sometimes they shone out clearly, sometimes they were car- 
ried under, like flowers tossed on the vexed surface of a stormy 
sea. 

She sat on the garden-seat, tired with walking, exhausted 
with much, thinking — with the long thoughts in which a 
whole lifetime rises up before the mind, and is spread out 
like a scroll before the eyes of those who feel that Death is 
near. 

If a poet had chanced to pass along the boulevard, he would 
have found an interesting picture in the face of this woman, 
grown old before her time. As she sat under the dotted 
shadow of the acacia, the shadow the acacia casts at noon, a 
thousand thoughts were written for all the world to see on her 
features, pale and cold even in the hot, bright sunlight. 


m 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


There was something sadder than the sense of waning life in 
that expressive face, some trouble that went deeper than the 
weariness of experience. It was a face of a type that fixes you 
in a moment among a host of characterless faces that fail to 
draw a second glance, a face to set you thinking. Among a 
thousand pictures in a gallery you are strongly impressed by 
the sublime anguish on the face of some Madonna of Murillo’s ; 
by some Beatrice Cenci in which Guido’s art portrays the 
most touching innocence against a background of horror and 
crime ; by the awe and majesty that should encircle a king, 
caught once and for ever by Velasquez in the sombre face of 
a Philip II., and so is it with some living human faces; they 
are tyrannous pictures which speak to you, submit you to 
searching scrutiny, and give response to your inmost thoughts, 
nay, there are faces that set forth a whole drama, and Mme. 
d’Aiglemont’s stony face was one of these awful tragedies, 
one of such faces as Dante Alighieri saw by thousands in his 
vision. 

For the little season that a woman’s beauty is in flower it 
serves her admirably well in the dissimulation to which her 
natural weakness and our social laws condemn her. A young 
face and rich color, and eyes that glow with light, a gracious 
maze of such subtle, manifold lines and curves, flawless and 
perfectly traced, is a screen that hides everything that stirs the 
woman within. A flush tells nothing, it only heightens the 
coloring so brilliant already ; all the fires that burn within can 
add little light to the flame of life in eyes which only seem the 
brighter for the flash of a passing pain. Nothing is so discreet 
as a young face, for nothing is less mobile ; it has the serenity, 
the surface smoothness, and the freshness of a lake. There is 
no character in women’s faces before the age of thirty. The 
painter discovers nothing there but pink and white, and the 
smile and expression that repeat the same thought in the same 
way — a thought of youth and love that goes no further than 
youth and love. But the face of an old woman has expressed 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


199 


all that lay in her nature; passion has carved lines on her 
features; love and wifehood and motherhood, and extremes 
of joy and anguish, have wrung them, and left their traces in 
a thousand wrinkles, all of which speak a language of their 
own ; then is it that a woman’s face becomes sublime in its 
horror, beautiful in its melancholy, grand in its calm. If it is 
permissible to carry the strange metaphor still further, it might 
be said that in the dried-up lake you can see the traces of all 
the torrents that once poured into it and made it what it is. 
An old face is nothing to the frivolous world ; the frivolous 
world is shocked by the sight of the destruction of such come- 
liness as it can understand; a commonplace artist sees nothing 
there. An old face is the province of the poets among poets 
of those who can recognize that something which is called 
Beauty, apart from all the conventions underlying so many 
superstitions in art and taste. 

Though Mme. d’Aiglemont wore a fashionable bonnet, it 
was easy to see that her once black hair had been bleached 
by cruel sorrows; yet her good taste and the gracious acquired 
instincts of a woman of fashion could be seen in the way she 
wore it, divided into two bandeaux, following the outlines of 
a forehead that still retained some traces of former dazzling 
beauty, worn and lined though it was. The contours of her 
face, the regularity of her features, gave some idea, faint in 
truth, of that beauty of which surely she had once been proud ; 
but those traces spoke still more plainly of the anguish which 
had laid it waste, of sharp pain that had withered the temples, 
and made those hollows in her cheeks, and empurpled the 
eyelids and robbed them of their lashes, and the eyes of their 
charm. She was in every way so noiseless ; she moved with 
a slow, self-contained gravity that showed itself in her whole 
bearing, and struck a certain awe into others. Her diffident 
manner had changed to positive shyness, due apparently to a 
habit now of some years’ growth, of effacing herself in her 


200 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


daughter’s presence. She spoke very seldom, and in the low 
tones used by those who perforce must live within themselves 
a life of reflection and concentration. This demeanor led 
others to regard her with an indefinable feeling which was 
neither awe nor compassion, but a mysterious blending of the 
many ideas awakened in us by compassion and awe. Finally, 
there was something in her wrinkles, in the lines of her face, 
in the look of pain in those wan eyes of hers, that bore elo- 
quent testimony to tears that never had fallen, tears that had 
been absorbed by her heart. Unhappy creatures, accustomed 
to raise their eyes to heaven, in mute appeal against the bit- 
terness of their lot, would have seen at once from her eyes 
that she was broken in to the cruel discipline of ceaseless 
prayer, would have discerned the almost imperceptible symp- 
toms of the secret bruises which destroy all the flowers of the 
soul, even the sentiment of motherhood. 

Painters have colors for these portraits, but words, and the 
mental images called up by words, fail to reproduce such 
impressions faithfully ; there are mysterious signs and tokens 
in the tones of the coloring and in the look of human faces, 
which the mind only seizes through the sense of sight ; and 
the poet is fain to record the tale of the events which wrought 
the havoc to make their terrible ravages understood. 

The face spoke of cold and steady storm, an inward con- 
flict between a mother’s longsuffering and the limitations of 
our nature, for our human affections are bounded by our 
humanity, and the infinite has no place in finite creatures. 
Sorrow endured in silence had at last produced an indefinable 
morbid something in this woman. Doubtless mental anguish 
had reacted on the physical frame, and some disease, perhaps 
an aneurism, was undermining Julie’s life. Deep-seated grief 
lies to all appearance very quietly in the depths where it is 
conceived, yet, so still and apparently dormant as it is, it 
ceaselessly corrodes the soul, like the terrible acid which eats 
away crystal. 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


201 


Two tears made their way down the marquise’s cheeks; 
she rose to her feet as if some thought more poignant than 
any that preceded it had cut her to the quick. She had 
doubtless come to a conclusion as to MoTna’s future ; and 
now, foreseeing clearly all the troubles in store for her child, 
the sorrows of her own unhappy life had begun to weigh once 
more upon her. The key of her position must be sought in 
her daughter’s situation. 

The Comte de Saint-Hereen had been away for nearly six 
months on a political mission. The countess, whether from 
sheer giddiness, or in obedience to the countless instincts of 
woman’s coquetry, or to essay its power — with all the vanity 
of a frivolous fine lady, all the capricious waywardness of a 
child — was amusing herself, during her husband’s absence, by 
playing with the passion of a clever but heartless man, dis- 
tracted (so he said) with love, the love that combines readily 
with every petty social ambition of a self-conceited coxcomb. 
Mine. d’Aiglemont, whose long experience had given her a 
knowledge of life, and taught her to judge of men and to 
dread the world, watched the course of this flirtation, and saw 
that it could only end in one way, if her daughter should fall 
into the hands of an utterly unscrupulous intriguer. How 
could it be other than a terrible thought for her that her 
daughter listened willingly to this rout ? Her darling stood 
on the brink of a precipice, she felt horribly sure of it, yet 
dared not hold her back. She was afraid of the countess. 
She knew, too, that Mo’ina would not listen to her wise warn- 
ings ; she knew that she had no influence over that nature — 
iron for her, silken-soft for all others. Her mother’s tender- 
ness might have led her to sympathize with the troubles of a 
passion called forth by the nobler qualities of a lover, but 
this was no passion — it was coquetry, and the marquise despised 
Alfred de Vandenesse, knowing that he had entered upon this 
flirtation with Moina as if it were a game of chess. 

But if Alfred de Vandenesse made her shudder with disgust, 


202 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


she was obliged — unhappy mother ! — to conceal the strongest 
reason for her loathing in the deepest recesses of her heart. 
She was on terms of intimate friendship with the Marquis de 
Vandenesse, the young man’s father ; and this friendship, a 
respectable one in the eyes of the world, excused the son’s 
constant presence in the house, he professing an old attach- 
ment, dating from childhood, for Mme. de Saint-Hereen. 
More than this, in vain did Mme. d’Aiglemont nerve herself 
to come between Mo'ina and Alfred de Vandenesse with a 
terrible word, knowing beforehand that she would not succeed ; 
knowing that the strong reason which ought to separate them 
would carry no weight ; that she should humiliate herself 
vainly in her daughter’s eyes. Alfred was too corrupt; 
Mo'ina too clever to believe the revelation ; the young countess 
would turn it off and treat it as a piece of maternal strategy. 
Mme. d’Aiglemont had built her prison walls with her own 
hands ; she had immured herself only to see Moina’s happi- 
ness ruined thence before she died ; she was to look on help- 
lessly at the ruin of the young life which had been her pride 
and joy and comfort, a life a thousand times dearer to her 
than her own. What words can describe anguish so hideous 
beyond belief, such unfathomed depths of pain? 

She waited for Mo'ina to rise, with the impatience and 
sickening dread of a doomed man, who longs to have done 
with life, yet turns cold at the thought of the headsman. 
She had braced herself for a last effort, but perhaps the pros- 
pect of the certain failure of the attempt was less dreadful to 
her than the fear of receiving yet again one of those thrusts 
that went to her very heart — before that fear her courage 
ebbed away. Her mother’s love had come to this. To love 
her child, to be afraid of her, to shrink from the thought of 
the stab, yet to go forward. So great is a mother’s affection in 
a loving nature that, before it can fade away into indifference, 
the mother herself must die or find support in some great 
power without her, in religion or another love. Since the 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


203 


marquise rose that morning, her fatal memory had called up 
before her some of those things, so slight to all appearance, 
that make landmarks in a life. Sometimes, indeed, a whole 
tragedy grows out of a single gesture; the tone in which a 
few words were spoken rends a whole life in twain ; a glance 
into indifferent eyes is the death-blow of the gladdest love ; 
and, unhappily, such gestures and such words were only too 
familiar to Mme. d’Aiglemont — she had met so many glances 
that wound the soul. No, there was nothing in those memories 
to bid her hope. On the contrary, everything went to show 
that Alfred had destroyed her hold on her daughter’s heart, 
that the thought of her was now associated with duty — not 
with gladness. In ways innumerable, in things that were 
mere trifles in themselves, the countess’ detestable conduct 
rose up before her mother; and the marquise, it may be, 
looked on Mol'na’s undutifulness as a punishment, and found 
excuses for her daughter in the will of heaven, that so she 
still might adore the hand that smote her. 

All these things passed through her memory that morning, 
and each recollection wounded her afresh so sorely that, with 
a very little additional pain, her brimming cup of bitterness 
must have overflowed. A cold look might kill her. 

The little details of domestic life are difficult to paint ; but 
one or two, perhaps, will suffice to give an idea of the rest. 

The Marquise d’Aiglemont, for instance, had grown rather 
deaf, but she could never induce Moi'na to raise her voice for 
her. Once, with the naivete of suffering, she had begged 
Mo'ina to repeat some remark which she had failed to catch, 
and Mo’ina obeyed, but with so bad a grace that Mme. d’Aigle- 
mont had never permitted herself to make her modest request 
again. Ever since that day, when Mo'ina was talking or retail- 
ing a piece of news, her mother was careful to come near to 
listen ; but this infirmity of deafness appeared to put the 
countess out of patience, and she would grumble thoughtlessly 
about it. This instance is one from among very many that 


204 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


must have gone to the mother’s heart ; and yet nearly all of 
them might have escaped a close observer, they consisted in 
faint shades of manner invisible to any but a woman’s eyes. 
Take another example : Mme. Aiglemont happened to say one 
day that the Princesse de Cadignan had called upon her. 

‘ ‘ Did she come to see you / ” Moi'na exclaimed. That was all ; 
but the countess’ voice and manner expressed surprise and 
well-bred contempt in semitones. Any heart, still young and 
sensitive, might well have applauded the philanthropy of 
savage tribes who kill off their old people when they grow too 
feeble to cling to a strongly shaken bough. Mme. d’Aigle- 
mont rose smiling, and went away to weep alone. 

Well-bred people, and women especially, only betray their 
feelings by imperceptible touches ; but those who can look 
back over their own experience on such bruises as this mother’s 
heart received, know also how the heart-strings vibrate to these 
light touches. Overcome by her memories, Mme. d’ Aigle- 
mont recollected one of those microscopically small things, 
so stinging and so painful was it that never till this moment 
had she felt all the heartless contempt that lurked beneath 
smiles. 

At the. sound of shutters thrown back at her daughter’s 
windows, she dried her tears, and hastened up the pathway 
by the railings. As she went, it struck her that the gardener 
had been unusually careful to rake the sand along the walk 
which had been neglected for some little time. As she stood 
under her daughter’s windows, the shutters were hastily closed. 

“ Moina, is it you? ” she asked. 

No answer. 

The marquise went on into the house. 

“ Madame la Comtesse is in the little drawing-room,” said 
the maid, when the marquise asked whether Mme. de Saint- 
Hereen had finished dressing. 

Mme. d’ Aiglemont hurried to the little drawing-room ; her 
heart was too full, her brain too busy to notice matters so 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


205 


slight ; but there on a sofa sat the countess in her loose morn- 
ing gown, her hair in disorder under the cap tossed carelessly 
on her head, her feet thrust into slippers. The key of her 
bedroom hung at her girdle. Her face, aglow with color, 
bore traces of almost stormy thought. 

“ What makes people come in ! ” she cried crossly. “ Oh ! 
it is you, mother ?” she interrupted herself, with a preoccupied 
look. 

“Yes, child; it is your mother.” 

Something in her tone turned those words into an out- 
pouring of the heart, the cry of some deep inward feeling, 
only to be described by the word “ holy.” So thoroughly in 
truth had she rehabilitated the sacred character of a mother 
that her daughter was impressed, and turned toward her, with 
something of awe, uneasiness, and remorse in her manner. 
The room was the farthest of a suite, and safe from indiscreet 
intrusion, for no one could enter it without giving warning of 
approach through the previous apartments. The marquise 
closed the door. 

“It is my duty, my child, to warn you in one of the most 
serious crises in the lives of us women ; you have perhaps 
reached it unconsciously, and I am come to speak to you as a 
friend rather than as a mother. When you married, you 
acquired freedom of action ; you are only accountable to your 
husband now ; but I asserted my authority so little (perhaps I 
was wrong) that I think I have a right to expect you to listen 
to me, for once at least, in a critical position when you must 
need counsel. Bear in mind, Mo’ina, that you are married to 
a man of high ability, a man of whom you may well be proud, 
a man who ” 

“ I know what you are going to say mother ! ” MoTna broke 
in pettishly. “ I am to be lectured about Alfred ” 

“Moina,” the marquise said gravely, as she struggled 
with her tears, “ you would not guess at once if you did not 
feel—” 


206 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


“What?” asked Moina, almost haughtily. “Why, really, 
mother ” 

Mme. d’Aiglemont here summoned up all her strength. 
“Moina,” she said, “you must attend carefully to this that 
I ought to tell you ” 

“I am attending,” returned the countess, folding her arms 
and affecting insolent submission. “ Permit me, mother, to 
ring for Pauline,” she added, with incredible self-possession ; 
“I will send her away first.” 

She rang the bell. 

“ My dear child, Pauline cannot possibly hear ” 

“Mamma,” interrupted the countess, with a gravity which 
must have struck her mother as something unusual, “ I 
must ” 

She stopped short, for the woman was in the room. 

“ Pauline, go yourself to Baudran’s and ask why my hat has 
not yet been sent.” 

Then the countess reseated herself and scrutinized her 
mother. The marquise, with a swelling heart and dry eyes, 
in painful agitation, which none but a mother can fully under- 
stand, began to open Moina’s eyes to the risk that she was 
running. But either the countess felt hurt and indignant at 
her mother’s suspicions of a son of the Marquis de Vandenesse 
or she was seized with a sudden fit of inexplicable levity 
caused by the inexperience of youth. She took advantage of 
a pause. 

“Mamma, I really thought you were only jealous of the 
father ” she said, with a forced laugh. 

Mme. d’Aiglemont shut her eyes and bent her head at the 
words, with a very faint, almost inaudible sigh. She looked 
up and out into space, as if she felt the common overmastering 
impulse to appeal to God at the great crises of our lives ; then 
she looked at her daughter, and her eyes were full of awful 
majesty and the expression of profound sorrow. 

“My child,” she said, and her voice was hardly recog- 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


207 


nizable, “ you have been less merciful to your mother than he 
against whom she sinned; less merciful than perhaps God 
himself will be!” 

Mme. d’ Aiglemont rose ; at the door she turned ; but she 
saw nothing but surprise in her daughter’s face. She went 
out. Scarcely had she reached the garden when her strength 
failed her. There was a violent pain at her heart, and she 
sank down on a bench. As her eyes wandered over the path, 
she saw fresh marks impressed on it, a man’s footprints were 
distinctly recognizable. It was too late, then, beyond a doubt. 
Now she began to understand the reason for that order given 
to Pauline, and with these torturing thoughts came a revelation 
more hateful than any that had gone before it. She drew her 
own inferences — the son of the Marquis de Vandenesse had 
destroyed all feeling of respect for her in her daughter’s mind. 
The physical pain grew worse ; by degrees she lost conscious- 
ness, and sat like one asleep upon the garden-seat. 

The Countess de Saint-Hereen, left to herself, thought that 
her mother had given her a somewhat shrewd home-thrust, 
but a kiss and a few attentions that evening would make all 
right again. 

A shrill cry came from the garden. She leaned carelessly 
out, as Pauline, not yet departed on her errand, called out for 
help, holding the marquise in her arms. 

“ Do not frighten my daughter ! ” these were the last words 
the mother uttered. 

Mo'ina saw them carry in a pale and lifeless form that 
struggled for breath, and arms moving restlessly as in protest 
or effort to speak ; and overcome by the sight, Moina followed 
in silence, and helped to undress her mother and lay her on 
her bed. The burden of her fault was greater than she could 
bear. In that supreme hour she learned to know her mother 
—too late, she could make no reparation now. She would 
have them leave her alone with her mother; and when there 
was no one else in the room, when she felt that the hand 


208 


A WOMAN OF THIRTY. 


which had always been so tender for her was now grown cold 
to her touch, she broke out into weeping. Her tears aroused 
the marquise ; she could still look at her darling Moina ; 
and at the sound of sobbing, that seemed as if it must rend 
the delicate, disheveled breast, could smile back at her 
daughter. That smile taught the unnatural child that for- 
giveness is always to be found in the great deep of a mother’s 
heart. 

Servants on horseback had been dispatched at once for the 
physician and surgeon and for Mme. d’Aiglemont’s grand- 
children. Mme. d’Aiglemont the younger and her little sons 
arrived with the medical men, a sufficiently impressive, silent, 
and anxious little group, which the servants of the house 
came to join. The young marquise, hearing no sound, 
tapped gently at the door. That signal, doubtless, roused 
Moina from her grief, for she flung open the door and stood 
before them. No words could have spoken more plainly 
than that disheveled figure looking out with haggard eyes upon 
the assembled family. Before that living picture of Remorse, 
the rest were dumb. It was easy to see that the marquise’s 
feet were stretched out stark and stiff with the agony of death; 
and Moina, leaning against the door-frame, looking in their 
faces, spoke in a hollow voice — 

“ I have lost my mother ! ” 

Paris, 1828-1844. 



A START IN LIFE. 


Translated by Clara Bell. 

To Laure , 

To whose bright and modest wit J owe the idea of 
this Scene . Hers be the honor / 

Her brother , 

De Balzac. 

Railroads, in a future now not far distant, must lead to 
the disappearance of certain industries and modify others, 
especially such as are concerned in the various modes of 
transport commonly used in the neighborhood of Paris. In 
fact, the persons and the things which form the accessories of 
this little drama will ere long give it the dignity of an archaeo- 
logical study. Will not our grandchildren be glad to know 
something of a time which they will speak of as the old days? 

For instance, the picturesque vehicles known as coucous , 
which used to stand on the Place de la Concorde and crowd 
the Cours-la-Reine, which flourished so greatly during a cen- 
tury, and still survived in 1830, exist no more. Even on the 
occasion of the most attractive rural festivity, hardly one is to 
be seen on the road in this year 1842. 

In 1820 not all the places famous for their situation, and 
designated as the environs of Paris, had any regular service 
of coaches. The Touchards, father and son, had acquired a 
monopoly of conveyances to and from the largest towns within 
a radius of fifteen leagues, and their establishment occupied 
splendid premises in the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis. In 
spite of their old standing and their strenuous efforts, in spite 
of their large capital and all the advantages of strong cen- 
14 ( 209 ) 


210 


A START IN LIFE. 


tralization, Touchards’ service had formidable rivals in the 
coucous of the Faubourg Saint-Denis for distances of seven or 
eight leagues out of Paris. The Parisian has indeed such a 
passion for the country that local establishments also held 
their own in many cases against the Petites Messagcrics (little 
stage-coaches), a name given to Touchards’ short-distance 
coaches, to distinguish them from the Grandes Messagcries 
(large stage-coaches), the general conveyance company, in 
the Rue Montmartre. 

At that time the success of the Touchards stimulated specu- 
lation ; conveyances were put on the road to and from the 
smallest towns — handsome, quick, and commodious vehicles, 
starting and returning at fixed hours ; and these, in a circuit 
of ten leagues or so, gave rise to vehement competition. 
Beaten on the longer distances, the coucou fell back on short 
runs, and survived a few years longer. It finally succumbed 
when the omnibus had proved the possibility of packing eigh- 
teen persons into a vehicle drawn by two horses. Nowadays 
the coucou , if a bird of such heavy flight is by chance still to 
be found in the recesses of some store for dilapidated vehicles, 
would, from its structure and arrangement, be the subject of 
learned investigations, like Cuvier’s researches on the animals 
discovered in the lime-quarries of Montmartre. 

These smaller companies, being threatened by larger specu- 
lations competing, after 1822, with the Touchards, had never- 
theless a fulcrum of support in the sympathies of the residents 
in the places they plied to. The master of the concern, who 
was both owner and driver of the vehicle, was usually a 
tavernkeeper of the district, to whom its inhabitants were as 
familiar as were their common objects and interests. He was 
intelligent in fulfilling commissions; he asked less for his 
little services, and therefore obtained more, than the employes 
of the Touchards. He was clever at evading the necessity for 
an excise pass. At a pinch he would infringe the rules as to 
the number of passengers he might carry. In fact, he was 


A START IN LIFE. 


211 


master of the affections of the people. Hence, when a rival 
appeared in the field, if the old-established conveyance ran on 
alternate days of the week, there were persons who would 
postpone their journey to take it in the company of the origi- 
nal driver, even though his vehicle and horses were none of 
the safest and best. 

One of the lines which the Touchards, father and son, tried 
hard to monopolize, but which was hotly disputed — nay, 
which is still a subject of dispute with their successors the 
Toulouses — was that between Paris and Beaumont-sur-Oise, a 
highly profitable district, since in 1822 three lines of convey- 
ances worked it at once. The Touchards lowered their prices, 
but in vain, and in vain increased the number of services; in 
vain they put superior vehicles on the road, the competitors 
held their own, so profitable is a line running through little 
towns like Saint-Denis and Saint-Brice, and such a string of 
villages as Prerrefitte, Groslay, Ecouen, Poncelles, Moisselles, 
Baillet, Monsoult, Maffiiers, Franconville, Presles, Nointel, 
Nerville, and others. The Touchards at last extended their 
line of service as far as to Chambly ; the rivals ran to Cham- 
bly. And at the present day the Toulouses go as far as 
Beauvais. 

On this road, the highway to England, there is a place 
which is not ilhnamed la Cave (the Cellar), a paved way 
leading down into one of the most delightful nooks of the 
Oise valley, and to the little town of 1 ’Isle-Adam, doubly 
famous as the native place of the now extinct family of l’lsle- 
Adam, and as the splendid residence of the Princes of Bour- 
bon-Conti. LTsle-Adam is a charming little town, flanked 
by two large hamlets, that of Nogent and that of Parmain, 
both remarkable for the immense quarries which have fur- 
nished the materials for the finest edifices of Paris, and indeed 
abroad too, for th^ base and capitals of the theatre at Brussels 
are of Nogent stone. 

Though remarkable for its beautiful points of view and for 


212 


A START IN LIFE. 


famous castles built by princes, abbots, or famous architects, 
as at Cassan, Stors, le Val, Nointel, Persan, etc., this district, 
in 1822, had as yet escaped competition, and was served by 
two coach-owners, who agreed to work it between them. 
This exceptional state of things was based on causes easily 
explained. From la Cave, where, on the highroad, begins 
the fine paved way, due to the magnificence of Princes of 
Conti, to l’lsle Adam, is a distance of two leagues; no main- 
line coach could diverge so far from the highway, especially 
as l’lsle-Adam was at that time the end of things in that 
direction. The road led thither, and ended there. Of late, 
a highroad joins the valley of Montmorency to that of l’lsle- 
Adam. Leaving Saint-Denis, it passes through Saint-Leu- 
Taverny, Meru, 1 * Isle- Adam, and along by the Oise as far as 
Beaumont. But in 1822 the only road to V Isle- Adam was that 
made by the Princes de Conti. 

Consequently Pierrotin and his colleague reigned supreme 
from Paris to lTsle-Adam, beloved of all the district. Pier- 
rotin’s coach and his friend’s ran by Stors, le Val, Parmain, 
Champagne, Mours, Prerolles, Nogent, Nerville, and Maffiiers. 
Pierrotin was so well known that the residents at Monsoult, 
Moisselles, Baillet, and Saint-Brice, though living on the high- 
road, made use* of his coach, in which there was more often a 
chance of a seat than in the Beaumont diligence , which was 
always full. Pierrotin and his friendly rival agreed to admira- 
tion. When Pierrotin started from lTsle-Adam, the other set 
out from Paris, and vice-versa. Of the opposition driver, 
nothing need be said. Pierrotin was the favorite in the line. 
And of the two, he alone appears on the scene in this vera- 
cious history. So it will suffice to say that the two coach- 
drivers lived on excellent terms, competing in honest warfare, 
and contending for customers without sharp practice. In 
Paris, out of economy, they put up at the same inn, using the 
same yard, the same stable, the same coach-shed, the same 
office, the same booking-clerk. And this fact is enough to 


A STAR!' IN LIFE. 


213 


show that Pierrotin and his opponent were “good dough, ” 
as the common folk say. 

That inn, at the corner of the Rue d’Enghien, exists to this 
day, and is called the Silver Lion (Lion d’ Argent). The 
proprietor of this hostelry — a hostelry from time immemorial 
for coach-drivers — himself managed a line of vehicles to Dam- 
martin on so sound a basis that his neighbors the Touchards, 
of the Petites Messageries opposite, never thought of starting 
a conveyance on that road. 

Though the coaches for lTsle-Adam were supposed to set 
out punctually, Pierrotin and his friend displayed a degree of 
indulgence on this point which, while it won them the affec- 
tions of the natives, brought down severe remonstrances from 
strangers who were accustomed to the exactitude of the larger 
public companies ; but the two drivers of these vehicles, half 
diligence , half coucou , always found partisans among their 
regular customers. In the afternoon the start fixed for four 
o’clock always dragged on till half-past; and in the morning, 
though eight was the hour named, the coach never got off 
before nine. 

This system was, however, very elastic. In summer, the 
golden season for coaches, the time of departure, rigorously 
punctual as concerned strangers, gave way for natives of the 
district. This method afforded Pierrotin the chance of 
pocketing the price of two places for one when a resident in 
the town came early to secure a place already booked by a 
bird of passage, who, by ill-luck, was behind time. Such 
elastic rules would certainly not be approved by a Puritan 
moralist ; but Pierrotin and his colleague justified it by the 
hard times, by their losses during the winter season, by the 
necessity they would presently be under of purchasing better 
carriages, and, finally, by an exact application of . the rules 
printed on their tickets, copies of which were of the greatest 
rarity, and never given but to those travelers who were so 
perverse as to insist. 


214 


A START IN LIFE. 


Pierrotin, a man of forty, was already the father of a 
family. He had left the cavalry in 1815, when the army was 
disbanded, and then this very good fellow had succeeded his 
father, who drove a coucou between l’lsle-Adam and Paris on 
somewhat erratic principles. After marrying the daughter of 
a small tavernkeeper, he extended and regulated the business, 
and was noted for his intelligence and military punctuality. 
Brisk and decisive, Pierrotin — a nickname, no doubt — had a. 1 
mobile countenance which gave an amusing expression and a 
semblance of intelligence to a face reddened by exposure to 
the weather. Nor did he lack the “gift of the gab,” which 
is caught by intercourse with the world and by seeing different 
psirts of it. His voice, by dint of talking to his horses and 
shouting to others to get out of the way, was somewhat harsh, 
but he could soften it to a customer. 

His costume, that of coach-drivers of the superior class, 
consisted of stout, strong boots, heavy with nails, and made 
at 1’ Isle- Adam, trousers of bottle-green velveteen, and a jacket 
of the same, over which, in the exercise of his functions, he 
wore a blue blouse, embroidered in colors on the collar, 
shoulder-pieces, and wristbands. On his head was a cap with 
*1 peak. His experience of military service had stamped on 
Pierrotin the greatest respect for social superiority, and a 
habit of obedience to people of the upper ranks ; but, while he 
was ready to be on familiar terms with the modest citizen, he 
was always respectful to women, of whatever class. At the same 
time, the habit of “ carting folks about,” to use his own 
expression, had led him to regard his travelers as parcels; 
though, being on feet, they demanded less care than the 
other merchandise, which was the aim and end of the service. 

Warned by the general advance, which since the peace had 
begun to tell on his business, Pierrotin was determined not to 
be beaten by the progress of the world. Ever since the last 
summer season he had talked a great deal of a certain large 
conveyance he had ordered of Farry, Breilmann & Co., 


A START IN LIFE. 


215 


the best diligence builders, as being needed by the constant 
increase of travelers. Pierrotin’s plant at that time consisted 
of two vehicles. One, which did duty for the winter, and 
the only one he ever showed to the tax-collector, was of the 
coucou species. The bulging sides of this vehicle allowed it 
to carry six passengers on two seats as hard as iron, though 
covered with yellow worsted velvet. These seats were divided 
by a wooden bar, which could be removed at pleasure or 
refixed in two grooves in the sides, at the height of a man’s 
back. This bar, perfidiously covered by Pierrotin with 
yellow velvet, and called by him a back to the seat, was the 
cause of much despair to the travelers from the difficulty of 
moving and readjusting it. If the board was painful to fix, 
it was far more so to the shoulder-blades when it was fitted ; on 
the other hand, if it was not unshipped, it made entrance and 
egress equally perilous, especially to women. 

Though each seat of this vehicle, which bulged at the 
sides, like a woman before childbirth, was licensed to hold no 
more than three passengers, it was not unusual to see eight 
packed in it like herrings in a barrel. Pierrotin declared that 
they were all the more comfortable since they formed a com- 
pact and immovable mass, whereas three were constantly 
thrown against each other, and often ran the risk of spoiling 
their hats against the roof of the vehicle by reason of the 
violent jolting on the road. In front of the body of this 
carriage there was a wooden box-seat, Pierrotin’s driving-seat, 
which could also carry three passengers, who were designated, 
as all the world knows, as lapins (rabbits). Occasionally, 
Pierrotin would accommodate four lapins , and then sat askew 
on a sort of box below the front seat for the lapins to rest 
their feet on ; this was filled with straw or such parcels as 
could not be injured. 

The body of the vehicle, painted yellow, was ornamented 
by a band of bright blue, on which might be read in white 
letters, on each sjde ; LTsle-Adam— Paris ; and on the back* 


216 


A START IN LIFE . 


Service de l’Isle-Adam. Our descendants will be under a 
mistake if they imagine that this conveyance could carry no 
more than thirteen persons, including Pierrotin. On great 
occasions three more could be seated in a square compartment 
covered with tarpaulin in which trunks, boxes, and parcels 
were generally piled ; but Pierrotin was too prudent to let 
any but regular customers sit there, and only took them up 
three or four hundred yards outside the barrier. These pas- 
sengers in the poiilciillei ", or hen-coop, the name given by the 
conductors to this part of a coach, were required to get out 
before reaching any village on the road where there was a 
station of gendarmerie ; for the overloading, forbidden by 
the regulations ‘‘for the greater safety of travelers,” was in 
these cases so excessive that the gendarme — always Pierrotin’s 
very good friend — could not have excused himself from re- 
porting such a flagrant breach of rules. But thus Pierrotin’s 
vehicle, on certain Saturday evenings and Monday mornings, 
carted out fifteen passengers; and then to help pull it, he 
gave his large but aged horse, named Rougeot, the assistance 
of a second nag about as big as a pony, which he could never 
sufficiently praise. This little steed was a mare called Bichette; 
and she ate little, she was full of spirit, nothing could tire her, 
she was worth her weight in gold ! 

“My wife would not exchange her for that fat lazybones 
Rougeot ! ” Pierrotin would exclaim, when a traveler laughed 
at him about this concentrated extract of horse. 

The difference between this carriage and the other was, 
that the second had four wheels. This vehicle, a remarkable 
structure, always spoken of as “ the four-wheeled coach,” 
could hold seventeen passengers, being intended to carry 
fourteen. It rattled so preposterously that the folk in l’Isle- 
Adam would say, “ Here comes Pierrotin ! ” when he had 
but just come out of the wood that hangs on the slope to the 
valley. It was divided into two lobes, one of which, called 
the interieur , the body of the coach, carried six passengers on 


A START IN LIFE. 


217 


two seats ; and the other, a sort of cab stuck on in front, was 
styled the coupe . This coupe could be closed by an incon- 
venient and eccentric arrangement of glass windows, which 
would take too long to describe in this place. The four- 
wheeled coach also had on top a sort of gig with a hood, into 
which Pierrotin packed six travelers ; it closed with leather 
curtains. Pierrotin himself had an almost invisible perch 
below the glass windows of the coupe. 

The coach to l’lsle-Adam only paid the taxes levied on 
public vehicles for the coucou , represented to carry six travelers, 
and whenever Pierrotin turned out the “ four-wheeled coach ’’ 
tie took out a special license. This may seem strange indeed 
in these days; but at first the tax on vehicles, imposed some- 
what timidly, allowed the owners of coaches to play these 
little tricks, which gave them the pleasure of “ putting their 
thumbs to their noses" behind the collector’s back, as they 
phrased it. By degrees, however, the hungry Exchequer grew 
strict ; it allowed no vehicle to take the road without display- 
ing the two plates which now certify that their capacity is 
registered and the tax paid. Everything, even a tax, has its 
age of innocence, and toward the end of 1822 that age was 
not yet over. Very often, in summer, the four-wheeled coach 
and the covered chaise made the journey in company, carry- 
ing in all thirty passengers, while Pierrotin paid only for six. 

On these golden days the convoy started from the Faubourg 
Saint-Denis at half-past four, and arrived in style at l’lsle- 
Adam by ten o’clock at night. And then Pierrotin, proud 
of his run, which necessitated the hire of extra horses, would 
say : “ We have made a good pace to-day ! ” To enable him 
to do nine leagues in five hours with this machinery, he did 
not stop, as the coaches usually do on this road, at Saint- 
Brice, Moisselles, and la Cave. 

The Silver Lion occupied a plot of ground running very far 
back. Though the front of the Rue Saint-Denis has no more 
than three or four windows, there was at that time, on one 

H 


213 


A START IN LIFE . 


side of the long yard, with the stables at the bottom, a large 
house backing on the wall of the adjoining property. The 
entrance was through an arched way under the second floor, 
and there was standing-room here for two or three coaches. 
In 1822, the booking-office for all the lines that put up at the 
Silver Lion was kept by the innkeeper’s wife, who had a book 
for each line ; she took the money, wrote down the names, 
and good-naturedly accommodated passengers’ luggage in her 
vast kitchen. The travelers were quite satisfied with this patri- 
archally free-and-easy mode of business. If they came too 
early, they sat down by the fire within the immense chimney- 
place, or lounged in the passage, or went to the Cafe de 1 ’Echi- 
quier, at the corner of the street of that name, parallel to the 
Rue d’Enghien, from which it is divided by a few houses 
only. 

Quite early in the autumn of that year, one Saturday morn- 
ing, Pierrotin, his hands stuffed through holes in his blouse 
and into his pockets, was standing at the front gate of the 
Silver Lion, whence he had a perspective view of the inn 
kitchen, and beyond it of the long yard and the stables at the 
end, like black caverns. The Dammartin diligence had just 
started, and was lumbering after Touchard’s coaches. It was 
past eight o’clock. Under the wide archway, over which was 
inscribed on a long board : Hotel du Lion d’ Argent, the 
stablemen and coach-porters were watching the vehicles start 
at the brisk pace which deludes the traveler into the belief 
that the horses will continue to keep it up. 

4 4 Shall I bring out the horses, master?” said Pierrotin’s 
stable-boy, when there was nothing more to be seen. 

“A quarter-past eight, and I see no passengers,” said Pier- 
rotin. “ What the deuce is become of them? Put the horses 
to, all the same. No parcels either. Bless us and save us ! 
This afternoon, now, he won’t know how to stow his passen- 
gers, as it is so fine, and I have only four booked. There’s a 












PlERROTI N SAT DOWN ON ONE OF THE ENORMOUS 

CURBSTONES. 





A STAR 7 IN LIFE. 


219 


pretty lookout for a Saturday ! That’s always the way when 
you’re wanting the ready ! It’s dog’s work, and work for a 
dog! ” 

“And if you had any, where would you stow ’em? You 
have nothing but your two-wheeled cab,” said the luggage- 
porter, trying to smooth down Pierrotin. 

“And what about my new coach?” 

“Then there is such a thing as your new coach ? ” asked 
the sturdy Auvergnat, grinning and showing his front teeth, 
as white and as broad as almonds. 

“You old good-for-nothing ! Why, she will take the road 
to-morrow, Sunday, and we want eighteen passengers to fill 
her!” 

“ Oh, ho ! A fine turn-out ; that’ll make the folk stare ! ” 
said the Auvergnat. 

“A coach like the one that runs to Beaumont, I can tell 
you ! Brand new, painted in red and gold, enough to make 
the Touchards burst with envy ! It will take three horses. I 
have found a fellow to Rougeot, and Bichette will trot unicorn 
like a good ’un. Come, harness up,” said Pierrotin, who was 
looking toward the Porte Saint-Denis while cramming his 
short pipe with tobacco, “ I see a lady out there, and a little 
man with bundles under his arm. They are looking for the 
Silver Lion, for they would have nothing to say to the coucous 
on the stand. Hey-day, I seem to know the lady for a cus- 
tomer.” 

“You often get home filled up after starting empty,” said 
his man. 

“But no parcels!” replied Pierrotin. “By the mass! 
What devil’s luck ! ” 

And Pierrotin sat down on one of the enormous curbstones 
which protected the lower part of the wheels from the friction 
of the walls, but he wore an anxious and thoughtful look that 
was not usual with him. This dialogue, apparently so trivial, 
had stirred up serious anxieties at the bottom of Pierrotin’g 


220 


A START IN LIFE. 


heart. And what could trouble Pierrotin’s heart but the 
thought of a handsome coach ? To cut a dash on the road to 
rival the Touchards, extend his service, carry passengers who 
might congratulate him on the increased convenience due to 
the improvements in coach-building, instead of hearing con- 
stant complaints of his drags, this was Pierrotin’s laudable 
ambition. 

Now the worthy man, carried away by his desire to triumph 
over his colleague, and to induce him some day perhaps to 
leave him without a competitor on the road to ITsle-Adam, 
had overstrained his resources. He had ordered his coach 
from Farry, Breilmann & Co., the makers who had lately 
introduced English coach-springs in the place of the swan’s- 
neck and other old-fashioned French springs; but these hard- 
hearted and mistrustful makers would only deliver the vehicle 
for ready cash. Not caring, indeed, to build a conveyance so 
unsalable if it were left on their hands, these shrewd trades- 
men had not undertaken the job till Pierrotin had paid them 
two thousand francs on account. To satisfy their justifiable 
requirements, Pierrotin had exhausted his savings and his 
credit. He had bled his wife, his father-in-law, and his 
friends. He had been to look at the superb vehicle the day 
before in the painter’s shop; it was ready, and waiting to take 
the road, but in order to see it there on the following day he 
must pay up. 

Hence Pierrotin was in need of a thousand francs ! Being 
in debt to the innkeeper for stable-room, he dared not borrow 
the sum of him. For lack of this thousand francs, he risked 
losing the two thousand already paid in advance, to say noth- 
ing of five hundred, the cost of Rougeot the second, and 
three hundred for new harness, for which, however, he had 
three months’ credit. And yet, urged by the wrath of despair 
and the folly of vanity, he had just declared that his coach 
would start on the morrow, Sunday. In paying the fifteen 
hundred francs on account of the two thousand five hundred, 


A START IN LIFE. 


221 


he had hoped that the coachmakers’ feelings might be touched 
so far that they would let him have the vehicle ; but, after 
three minutes’ reflection, he exclaimed — 

“ No, no ! they are sharks, perfect skinflints. Supposing I 
were to apply to Monsieur Moreau, the steward at Presles — he 
is such a good fellow, that he would, perhaps, take my note of 
hand at six months’ date,” thought he, struck by a new idea. 

At this instant, a servant out of livery, carrying a leather 
trunk, on coming across from the Touchards’ office, where he 
had failed to find a place vacant on the Chambly coach start- 
ing at one o’clock, said to the driver — 

“ Pierrot in ? Is that you ? ” 

“ What then ? ” said Pierrot in. 

“ If you can wait less than a quarter of an hour, you can 
carry my master; if not, I will take his portmanteau back 
again, and he must make the best of a chaise off the stand.” 

“ I will wait two — three-quarters of an hour, and five 
minutes more to that, my lad,” said Pierrotin, with a glance 
at the smart little leather trunk, neatly strapped, and fastened 
with a brass lock engraved with a coat-of-arms. 

‘‘Very good, then, there you are,” said the man, relieving 
his shoulder of the trunk, which Pierrotin lifted, weighed in 
his hand, and scrutinized. 

“Here,” said he to his stable-boy, “pack it round with 
soft hay, and put it in the boot at the back. There is no 
name on it,” said he. 

“There are monseigneur’s arms,” replied the servant. 

“Monseigneur? — worth his weight in gold! Come and 
have a short drink,” said Pierrotin, with a wink, as he led 
the way to the Cafe of the Echiquiers. “ Two absinthes,” 
cried he to' the waiter as they went in. “ But who is your 
master, and where is he bound? I never saw you before,” 
said Pierrotin to the servant as they clinked glasses. 

“ And for very good reasons,” replied the footman. “ My 
master does not go your way once a year, and always then in 


222 


A START IN LIFE. 


his own carriage. He prefers the road by the Orge valley, 
where he has the finest park near Paris, a perfect Versailles, a 
family estate, from which he takes his name. Don’t you 
know Monsieur Moreau?” 

“The steward at Presles?” said Pierrotin. 

“Well, Monsieur le Comte is going to spend two days at 
Presles.” 

“Oh, ho, then my passenger is the Comte de Serizy!” 
cried Pierrotin. 

“Yes, my man, no less. But, mind, he sends strict orders. 
If you have any of the people belonging to your parts in your 
chaise, do not mention the count’s name ; he wants to travel 
incognito , and desired me to tell you so, and promise you a 
handsome tip.” 

“ Hah ! and has this hide-and-seek journey anything to do, 
by any chance, with the bargain that old Leger, the farmer 
at les Moulineaux, wants to make ? ” 

“I don’t know,” replied the man; “but the fat is in the 
fire. Last evening I was sent to the stables to order the 
chaise a la Daumont ,* by seven this morning, to drive to 
Presles ; but at seven my master countermanded it. Augustin, 
his valet, ascribes this change of plan to the visit of a lady, 
who seemed to have come from the country.” 

“ Can any one have had anything to say against Monsieur 
Moreau? The best of men, the most honest, the king of 
men, I say ! He might have made a deal more money than 
he has done if he had chosen, take my word for it ” 

“ Then he was very foolish,” said the servant sententiously. 

“Then Monsieur de Serizy is going to live at Presles at 
last? The castle has been refurnished and done up,” said 
Pierrotin after a pause. “Is it true that two hundred thou- 
sand francs have been spent on it already?” 

“ If you or I had the money that has been spent there, we 
could set up in the world. If Madame la Comtesse goes 
* A carriage known by this name. 


A START ttf LIFE, 223 

down there, the Moreaus’ fun will be over,” added the man, 
with mysterious significance. 

“A good man is Monsieur Moreau,” repeated Pierrotin, 
who was still thinking of borrowing the thousand francs from 
the steward; “a man that makes his men work, and does not 
spare them ; who gets all the profit out of the land, and for 
his master’s benefit too. A good man ! He often comes to 
Paris, and always by my coach ; he gives me something hand- 
some for myself, and always has a lot of parcels to and fro. 
Three or four a day, sometimes for monsieur and sometimes 
for madame ; a bill of fifty francs a month, say, only on the 
carrier’s score. Though madame holds her head a little 
above her place, she is fond of her children ; I take them 
to school for her and bring them home again. And she 
always gives me five francs, and your biggest pot would not 
do more. And whenever I have any one from them or to 
them, I always drive right up to the gates of the house — I 
could not do less, now, could I?” 

“They say that Monsieur Moreau had no more than a 
thousand crowns in the world when Monsieur le Comte put 
him in as land steward at Presles,” said the loquacious man- 
servant. 

“But in seventeen years’ time — since 1806 — the man must 
have made something,” replied Pierrotin. 

“To be sure,” said the servant, shaking his head. “And 
masters are queer too. I hope, for Moreau’s sake, that he has 
feathered his nest.” 

“ I often deliver hampers at your house in the Chauss£e- 
d’Antin,” said Pierrotin, “but I have never had the privilege 
of seeing either the master or his lady.” 

“Monsieur le Comte is a very good sort,” said the man 
confidentially; “but if he wants you to hold your tongue 
about his cognifo, there is a screw loose you may depend. 
At least, that is what we think at home. For why else should he 
counterorder the traveling carriage? Why ride in a public 


224 


A S7ART IN LIFE. 


chaise? A peer of France might take a hired chaise, you 
would think.” 

“ A hired chaise might cost him as much as forty francs for 
the double journey; for, I can tell, if you don’t know our 
road, it is fit for squirrels to climb. Everlastingly up and 
down!” said Pierrotin. ‘‘Peer of France or tradesman, 
everybody looks at both sides of a five-franc piece. If this 
trip means mischief to Monsieur Moreau — dear, dear, I should 
be vexed indeed if any harm came to him. By the mass ! 
Can no way be found of warning him ? For he is a real 
good ’un, an honest sort, the king of men, I say ” 

“ Pooh ! Monsieur le Comte is much attached to Monsieur 
Moreau,” said the other. “ But if you will take a bit of good 
advice from me, mind your own business, and let him mind 
his. We all have quite enough to do to take care of ourselves. 
You just do what you are asked to do ; all the more because 
it does not pay to play fast and loose with monseigneur. 
Add to that, the count is generous. If you oblige him that 
much,” said the man, measuring off the nail of one finger, 
“ he will reward you that much,” and he stretched out his 
arm. 

This judicious hint, and yet more the illustrative figure, 
coming from a man so high in office as the Comte de Serizy’s 
second footman, had the effect of cooling Pierrotin’s zeal for 
the steward of Presles. 

“Well, good-day, Monsieur Pierrotin,” said the man. 

A short sketch of the previous history of the Comte de 
S6rizy and his steward is here necessary to explain the little 
drama about to be played in Pierrotin’s coach. 

Monsieur Hugret de Serizy is descended in a direct line 
from the famous President Hugret, ennobled by Francis the 
First. They bear as arms party per pale or and sable , an 
orle and two lozenges counter changed. Motto, i semper 
melius eris y which, like the two distaffs assumed as supporters, 


A START IN LIFE. 


225 


shows the modest pretense of the citizen class at a time when 
each rank of society had its own place in the State, and also 
the artlessness of the age in the punning motto, where eris 
with the / at the beginning, and the final S of melius , repre- 
sent the name, Serisi, of the estate, whence the title. 

The present count’s father was a president of Parliament 
before the Revolution. He himself, a member of the High 
Council of State in 1787, at the early age of two-and-twenty, 
was favorably known for certain reports on some delicate 
matters. He did not emigrate during the Revolution, but 
remained on his lands of Serizy, near Arpajon, where the 
respect felt for his father protected him from molestation. 

After spending a few years in nursing the old president, 
whom he lost in 1 794, he was elected to the Council of Five 
Hundred, and took up his legislative functions as a distraction 
from his grief. 

After the eighteenth Brumaire, Monsieur de Serizy became 
the object — as did all the families connected with the old 
Parliament — of the First Consul’s attentions, and by him he 
was appointed a councilor of State to reorganize one of the 
most disorganized branches of the administration. Thus this 
scion of a great historical family became one of the most 
important wheels in the vast and admirable machinery due to 
Napoleon. The State councilor ere long left his depart- 
ment to be made a minister. The Emperor created him 
count and senator, and he was proconsul to two different 
kingdoms in succession. 

In 1806, at the age of forty, he married the sister of the 
one-time Marquis de Ronquerolles, and widow, at the age of 
twenty, of Gaubert, one of the most distinguished of the 
Republican generals, who left her all his wealth. This match, 
suitable in point of rank, doubled the Comte de Serizy’s 
already considerable fortune ; he was now the brother-in-law 
of the ci-devant Marquis de Rouvre, whom Napoleon created 
count and appointed to be his chamberlain. 

15 


226 


A START IN LIFE. 


In 1814, worn out with incessant work, Monsieur de S6rizy 
whose broken health needed rest, gave up all his appoint- 
ments, left the district of which Napoleon had made him 
governor, and came to Paris, where the Emperor was com- 
pelled by ocular evidence to concede his claims. This inde- 
fatigable master, who could not believe in fatigue in other 
people, had at first supposed the necessity that prompted the 
Comte de Serizy to be simple defection. Though the senator 
was not in disgrace, it was said that he had cause for com- 
plaint of Napoleon. Consequently, when the Bourbons came 
back, Louis XVIII., whom Monsieur de Serizy acknowledged 
as his legitimate sovereign, granted to the senator, now a peer 
of France, the highly confidential post of steward of his privy 
purse, and made him a minister of State. 

On the 20th March, Monsieur de Serizy did not follow the 
King to Ghent ; he made it known to Napoleon that he re- 
mained faithful to the House of Bourbon, and accepted no 
peerage during the Hundred Days, but spent that brief reign 
on his estate of Serizy. After the Emperor’s second fall, the 
count naturally resumed his seat in the Privy Council, was one 
of the Council of State, and liquidator on behalf of France 
in the settlement of the indemnities demanded by foreign 
powers. 

He had no love of personal magnificence, no ambition 
even, but exerted great influence in public affairs. No import- 
ant political step was ever taken without his being consulted, 
but he never went to court, and was seldom seen in his own 
drawing-room. His noble life, devoted to work from the 
first, ended by being perpetual work and nothing else. The 
count rose at four in the morning in all seasons, worked till 
midday, then took up his duties as a peer, or as vice-president 
of the Council, and went to bed at nine. 

Monsieur de Serizy had long worn the grand cross of the 
Legion of Honor; he also had the orders of the Golden 
Fleece, of Saint Andrew of Russia, of the Prussian Eagle ; in 


A START IN LIFE. 


227 


short, almost every order of the European Courts. No one was 
less conspicuous or more valuable than he in the world of 
politics. As may be supposed, to a man of his temper the 
flourish of court favor and worldly success were a matter of 
indifference. 

But no man, unless he is a priest, can live such a life with- 
out some strong motive ; and his mysterious conduct had its 
key — a cruel one. The count had loved his wife before he 
married her, and in him this passion had withstood all the 
domestic discomforts of matrimony with a widow who re- 
mained mistress of herself, after as well as before her second 
marriage, and who took all the more advantage of her liberty 
because Monsieur de Serizy indulged her as a mother indulges 
a spoilt child. Incessant work served him as a shield against 
his heart-felt woes, buried with the care that a man engaged 
in politics takes to hide such secrets. And he fully understood 
how ridiculous jealousy would be in the eyes of the world, 
which would certainly never have admitted the possibility of 
conjugal passion in a time-worn official. 

How was it that his wife had thus bewitched him from the 
first days of marriage ? Why had he suffered in those early 
days without taking his revenge? Why did he no longer dare 
to be revenged ? And why, deluded by hope, had he allowed 
time to slip away? By what means had his young, pretty, 
clever wife reduced him to subjection ? The answer to these 
questions would require a long story, out of place in this 
“ Scene,” and women, if not men, may be able to guess it. 
At the same time, it may be observed that the count’s inces- 
sant work and many sorrows had unfortunately done much to 
deprive him of the advantages indispensable to a man who has 
to compete with unfavorable comparisons. The saddest, per- 
haps, of all the count’s secrets was the fact that his wife’s repul- 
sion was partly justified by ailments which he owed entirely to 
overwork. Kind, nay, more than kind, to his wife, he made her 
mistress of herself and house ; she received all Paris, she went 


228 


A START IN LIFE. 


into the country, or she came back again, precisely as though 
she were still a widow ; he took care of her money, and sup- 
plied her luxuries as if he had been her agent. 

The countess held her husband in the highest esteem ; in- 
deed, she liked his turn of wit. Her approbation could give 
him pleasure, and thus she could do what she liked with the 
poor man by sitting and chatting with him for an hour. Like 
the great nobles of former days, the count so effectually pro- 
tected his wife that he would have regarded any slur cast 
en her reputation as an unpardonable insult to himself. The 
world greatly admired his character, and Madame de Serizy 
owed much to her husband. Any other woman, even though 
she belonged to so distinguishd a family as that of Ronque- 
rolles, might have found herself disgraced for ever. The 
countess was very ungrateful — but charming in her ingratitude. 
Yet from time to time she would pour a balm on the count’s 
heart-wounds. 

We must now explain the cause of the minister’s hurried 
journey and wish to remain unknown. 

A rich farmer of Beaumont-sur-Oise, named Leger, held a 
farm of which the various portions were all fractions of the 
estate owned by the count, thus impairing the splendid prop- 
erty of Presles. The farm-lands belonged to a townsman of 
Beaumont-sur-Oise, one Margueron. The lease he had granted 
to Leger in 1799, at a ^ me when the advance since made in 
agriculture could not be foreseen, was nearly run out, and the 
owner had refused Leger’s terms for renewing it. Long since, 
Monsieur de Serizy, wanting to be quit of the worry and 
squabbling that come of such inclosed plots, had hoped to be 
able to buy the farm, having heard that Monsieur Margueron’s 
sole ambition was to see his only son, a modest official, pro- 
moted to be collector of the revenue at Senlis. 

Moreau had hinted to his master that he had a dangerous 
rival in the person of old Leger. The farmer, knowing that 
he could run up the land to a high price by selling it piece- 


A START IN LIFE. 


229 


meal to the count, was capable of paying a sum so high as to 
outbid the profit derivable from the collectorship to be be- 
stowed on the younger Margueron. Two days since, the 
count, who wanted to have done with the matter, had sent for 
his notary, Alexandre Crottat, and Derville his solicitor, to 
inquire into the state of the affair. Though Crottat and Der- 
ville cast doubts on the steward’s zeal — and, indeed, it was a 
puzzling letter from him that gave rise to this consultation — 
the count defended Moreau, who had, he said, served him 
faithfully for seventeen years. 

“ Well,” Derville replied, “ I can only advise your lordship 
to go in person to Presles and ask this Margueron to dinner. 
Crottat will send down his head-clerk with a form of sale ready 
drawn out, leaving blank pages or lines for the insertion of 
descriptions of the plots and the necessary titles. Your excel- 
lency will do well to go provided with a cheque for part of the 
purchase-money in case of need, and not to forget the letter 
appointing the son to the collectorship at Senlis. If you do 
not strike on the nail, the farm will slip through your fingers. 
You have no idea, Monsieur le Comte, of peasant cunning. 
Given a peasant on one side and a diplomatist on the other, 
the peasant will win the day.” 

Crottat confirmed this advice, which, from the footman’s 
report to Pierrotin, the count had evidently adopted. On the 
day before, the count had sent a note to Moreau by the Beau- 
mont diligence, desiring him to invite Margueron to dinner, 
as he meant to come to some conclusion concerning the 
Moulineaux farm-lands. 

Before all this, the count had given orders for the restora- 
tion of the living-rooms at Presles, and Monsieur Grindot, a 
fashionable architect, went down there once a week. So, 
while treating for his acquisition, Monsieur de S6rizy pro- 
posed inspecting the works at the same time and the effect of 
the new decorations. He intended to give his wife a surprise 
by taking her to Presles, and the restoration of the castle was 


230 


A START IN LIFE. 


a matter of pride to him. What event, then, could have hap- 
pened that the count, who, only the day before, was intend- 
ing to go overtly to Presles, should now wish to travel thither 
incognito , in Pierrotin’s chaise? 

Here a few words are necessary as to the antecedent history 
of the steward at Presles. 

This man, Moreau, was the son of a proctor in a provincial 
town, who at the time of the Revolution had been made a 
magistrate ( procureur-syndic ) at Versailles. In this position 
the elder Moreau had been largely instrumental in saving the 
property and life of the S6rizys, father and son. Citizen 
Moreau had belonged to the party of Danton ; Robespierre, 
implacable in revenge, hunted him down, caught him, and 
had him executed at Versailles. The younger Moreau, in- 
heriting his father’s doctrines and attachments, got mixed up 
in one of the conspiracies plotted against the First Consul on 
his accession to power. Then Monsieur de Serizy, anxious to 
pay a debt of gratitude, succeeded in effecting Moreau’s escape 
after he was condemned to death; in 1804 he asked and ob- 
tained his pardon ; he at first found him a place in his office, 
and afterward made him his secretary and manager of his 
private affairs. 

Some time after his patron’s marriage, Moreau fell in love 
with the countess’ maid and married her. To avoid the un- 
pleasantly false position in which he was placed by this union 
— and there were many such at the Imperial Court — he asked 
to be appointed land steward at Presles, where his wife could 
play the lady, and where, in a neighborhood of small folk, 
they would neither of them be hurt in their own conceits. 
The count needed a faithful agent at Presles, because his wife 
preferred to reside at S£rizy, which is no more than five 
leagues from Paris. Moreau was familiar with all his affairs, 
and he was intelligent ; before the Revolution he had studied 
law under his father. So Monsieur de Serizy said to him — 

“You will not make a fortune, for you have tied a millstone 


A START IN LIFE. 


231 


around your neck ; but you will be well off, for I will provide 
for that.” 

And, in fact, the count gave Moreau a fixed salary of a 
thousand crowns, and a pretty little lodge to live in beyond 
the outbuildings ; he also allowed him so many cords of wood 
a year out of the plantations for fuel, so much straw, oats, and 
hay for two horses, and a certain proportion of the payments 
in kind. A sub-prefect is less well off. 

During the first eight years of his stewardship, Moreau 
managed the estate conscientiously, and took an interest in 
his work. The count, when he came down to inspect the 
domain, to decide on purchases or sanction improvements, 
was struck by Moreau’s faithful service, and showed his appro- 
bation by handsome presents. But when Moreau found him- 
self the father of a girl — his third child — he was so completely 
established at his ease at Presles that he forgot how greatly 
he was indebted to Monsieur de Serizy for such unusually 
liberal advantages. Thus in 1816, the steward, who had 
hitherto done no more than help himself freely, accepted 
from a wood-merchant a bonus of twenty-five thousand francs, 
with the promise of a rise, for signing an agreement for 
twelve years allowing the contractor to cut fire-logs in the 
woods of Presles. Moreau argued thus : He had no promise 
of a pension ; he was the father of a family ; the count cer- 
tainly owed him so much by way of premium on nearly ten 
years’ service. He was already lawfully possessed of sixty 
thousand francs in savings ; with this sum added to it he 
could purchase for a hundred and twenty thousand a farm in 
the vicinity of Champagne, a hamlet on the right bank of the 
Oise a little way above l’Isle-Adam. 

The stir of politics hindered the count and the country- 
folk from taking cognizance of this investment ; the business 
was indeed transacted in the name of Madame Moreau, who 
was supposed to have come into some money from an old 
great-aunt in her own part of the country, at Saint-L6. 


232 


A START IN LIFE . 


When once the steward had tasted the delicious fruits of 
ownership, though his conduct was still apparently honesty 
itself, he never missed an opportunity of adding to his clan- 
destine wealth ; the interests of his three children served as 
an emollient to quench the ardors of his honesty, and we must 
do him the justice to say that while he was open to a bribe, 
took care of himself in concluding a bargain, and strained his 
rights to the last point, he was still honest in the eye of the 
law; no proof could have been brought in support of any 
accusation. According to the jurisprudence of the least dis- 
honest of Paris cooks, he shared with his master the profits 
due to his sharp practice. This way of making a fortune was 
a matter of conscience — nothing more. Energetic, and fully 
alive to the count’s interests, Moreau looked out all the more 
keenly for good opportunities of driving a bargain, since he 
was sure of a handsome douceur. Presles was worth sixty-two 
thousand francs in cash rents ; and throughout the district, 
for ten leagues round, the saying was, “ Monsieur de S6rizy 
has a second self in Moreau ! ” 

Moreau, like a prudent man, had, since 1817, invested his 
salary and his profits year by year in the Funds, feathering his 
nest in absolute secrecy. He had refused various business 
speculations on the plea of want of money, and affected pov- 
erty so well to the count that he had obtained two scholar- 
ships for his boys at the College Henri IV. And, at this 
moment, Moreau owned a hundred and twenty thousand 
francs in reduced consols, then paying five per cent., and 
quoted at eighty. These unacknowledged hundred and twenty 
thousand francs, and his farm at Champagne, to which he had 
made additions, amounted to a fortune of about two hundred 
and eighty thousand francs, yielding an income of sixteen 
thousand francs a year. 

This, then, was the steward’s position at the time when the 
count wished to purchase the farm of les Moulineaux, of which 
the possession had become indispensable to his comfort. This 


A START IN LIFE , . 


233 


farm comprehended ninety-six plots of land, adjoining, bor- 
dering, and marching with the estate of Presles, in many cases 
indeed completely surrounded by the count’s property, like a 
square in the middle of a chess-board, to say nothing of the 
dividing hedges and ditches, which gave rise to constant dis- 
putes when a tree was to be cut down if it stood on debatable 
ground. Any other Minister of State would have fought 
twenty lawsuits a year over the lands of les Moulineaux. 

Old Leger wanted to buy them only to sell to the count ; 
and to make the thirty or forty thousand francs of profit he 
hoped for, he had long been endeavoring to come to terms 
with Moreau. Only three days before this critical Saturday, 
Farmer Leger, driven by press of circumstances, had, standing 
out in the fields, clearly demonstrated to the steward how he 
could invest the Comte de Serizy’s money at two and a half 
per cent, in purchasing other plots ; that is to say, could, as 
usual, seem to be serving the count’s interests while pocketing 
the bonus of forty thousand francs offered him on the trans- 
action. 

“And on my honor,” said the steward to his wife as they 
went to bed that evening, “ if I can make fifty thousand 
francs on the purchase of les Moulineaux — for the count will 
give me ten thousand at least — we will retire to 1’ Isle- Adam, 
to the Pavilion de Nogent.” 

This pavilion is a charming little house built for a mistress 
by the Prince de Conti in a style of prodigal elegance and 
with every convenience. 

“ I should like that,” said his wife. “ The Dutchman who 
has been living there has done it up very handsomely, and he 
will let us have it for thirty thousand francs, since he is 
obliged to go back to the Indies.” 

“It is but a stone’s throw from Champagne,” Moreau went 
on. “I have hopes of being able to buy the farm and mill 
at Mours for a hundred thousand francs. We should thus 
have ten thousand francs a year out of land, one of the pret- 


234 


A START IN LIFE. 


tiest places in all the valley, close to our farm lands, and six 
thousand francs a year still in the Funds.” 

“And why should you not apply to be appointed justice of 
the peace at l’lsle-Adam? It would give us importance and 
fifteen hundred francs a year more.” 

“Yes, I have thought of that.” 

In this frame of mind, on learning that his patron was 
coming to Presles, and wished him to invite Margueron to 
dinner on Saturday, Moreau at once sent off a messenger, who 
delivered a note to the count’s valet too late in the evening 
for it to be delivered to Monsieur de Serizy ; but Augustin 
laid it, as was usual, on his master’s desk. In this letter 
Moreau begged the count not to take so much trouble ; to 
leave the matter to his management. By his account Mar- 
gueron no longer wished to sell the lands in one lot, but 
talked of dividing the farm into ninety-six plots. This, at 
any rate, he must be persuaded to give up ; and perhaps, said 
the steward, it might be necessary to find some one to lend 
his name as a screen. 

Now, everybody has enemies. The steward of Presles and 
his wife had given offense to a retired officer named de Rey- 
bert and his wife. From stinging words and pin-pricks they 
had come to daggers drawn. Monsieur de Reybert breathed 
nothing but vengeance ; he aimed at getting Moreau deposed 
from his place and filling it himself. These two ideas were 
twins. Hence the agent’s conduct, narrowly watched for 
two years past, had no secrets from the Reyberts. At the 
very time when Moreau was dispatching his letter to Monsieur 
de S6rizy, Reybert had sent his wife to Paris. Madame de 
Reybert so strongly insisted on seeing the count, that, being 
refused at nine in the evening, when he was going to bed, she 
was shown into his study by seven o’clock next morning. 

“Monseigneur,” said she to the Minister, “my husband 
and I are incapable of writing an anonymous letter. I am 
Madame de Reybert, nee de Corroy. My husband has a pen- 


A START IN LIFE. 


235 


sion of no more than six hundred francs a year, and we live 
at Presles, where your land steward exposes us to insult upon 
insult though we are gentlefolk. Monsieur de Reybert, who 
has no love of intrigue — far from it ! — retired as a Captain of 
Artillery in 1816 after twenty years’ service, but he never came 
under the Emperor’s eye, Monsieur le Comte ; and you must 
know how slowly promotion came to those who did not serve 
under the Master himself ; and, beside, my husband’s honesty 
and plain speaking did not please his superiors. 

“ For three years my husband has been watching your 
steward for the purpose of depriving him of his place. We 
are outspoken, you see. Moreau has made us his enemies, 
and we have kept our eyes open. I have come therefore to 
tell you that you are being tricked in this business of the 
Moulineaux farm lands. You are to be cheated of a hundred 
thousand francs, which will be shared between the notary, 
Leger, and Moreau. You have given orders that Margueron 
is to be asked to dinner, and you intend to go to Presles 
to-morrow ; but Margueron will be ill, and Leger is so con- 
fident of getting the farm that he is in Paris realizing enough 
capital. As we have enlightened you, if you want an honest 
agent, engage my husband. Though of noble birth, he will 
serve you as he served his country. Your steward has made 
and saved two hundred and fifty thousand francs, so he is not 
to be pitied.” 

The count thanked Madame de Reybert very coldly and 
answered her with curt speeches, for he greatly detested an 
informer ; still, as he remembered Derville’s suspicions, he 
was shaken in his mind, and then his eye fell on Moreau’s 
letter ; he read it, and in those assurances of devotion, and 
the respectful remonstrances as to the want of confidence 
implied by his intention of conducting this business himself, 
he saw the truth about Moreau. 

“ Corruption has come with wealth, as usual,” said he to 
himself. 


236 


A START IN LIFE. 


He had questioned Madame de Reybert less to ascertain 
the details than to give himself time to study her, and he had 
then written a line to his notary to desire him not to send his 
clerk to Presles, but to go there himself and meet him at 
dinner. 

“If you should have formed a bad opinion of me, Mon- 
sieur le Comte, for the step I have taken unknown to my hus- 
band,” said Madame Reybert in conclusion, “you must at 
least be convinced that we have obtained our knowledge as 
concerning your steward by perfectly natural means ; the 
most sensitive conscience can find nothing to blame us for.” 

Madame de Reybert nee de Corroy held herself as straight 
as a pikestaff. 

The count’s rapid survey took in a face pitted by the small- 
pox till it looked like a colander, a lean, flat figure, a pair of 
eager, light-colored eyes, fair curls flattened on an anxious 
brow, a faded green silk bonnet lined with pink, a white stuff 
dress with lilac spots, and kid shoes. Monsieur de Serizy dis- 
cerned in her the wife of the poor gentleman ; some Puri- 
tanical soul subscribing to the French “ Courrier,” glowing 
with virtue, but very well aware of the advantages of a fixed 
place, and coveting it. 

“ A pension of six hundred francs, you said ? ” replied the 
count, answering himself rather than Madame de Reybert’s 
communication. 

“Yes, Monsieur le Comte.” 

“ You were a de Corroy ? ” 

“ Yes, monsieur, of a noble family of the Messin country, 
my husband’s country.” 

“ And in what regiment was Monsieur de Reybert?” 

“In the 7th Artillery.” 

“ Good ! ” said the count, writing down the number. 

He thought he might very well place the management of 
the estate in the hands of a retired officer, concerning whom 
he could get the fullest information at the War Office. 


A START IN LIFE. 


237 


“ Madame,” he went on, ringing for his valet, “ return to 
Presles with my notary, who is to arrange to dine there to- 
night, and to whom I have written a line of introduction ; 
this is his address. I am going to Presles myself, but secretly, 
and will let Monsieur de Reybert know when to call on me.” 

So it was not a false alarm that had startled Pierrotin with 
the news of Monsieur de Serizy’s journey in a public chaise, 
and the warning to keep his name a secret ; he foresaw immi- 
nent danger about to fall on one of his best customers. 

On coming out of the cafe, Pierrotin perceived, at the gate 
of the Silver Lion, the woman and youth whom his acumen 
had recognized as travelers ; for the lady, with outstretched 
neck and an anxious face, was evidently looking for him. 
This lady, in a re-dyed black silk, a gray bonnet, and an old 
French cashmere shawl, shod in open-work silk stockings and 
kid shoes, held a flat straw basket and a bright blue umbrella. 
She had once been handsome, and now looked about forty ; 
and her blue eyes, bereft of the sparkle that happiness might 
have given them, showed that she had long since renounced 
the world. Her dress no less than her person betrayed a 
mother entirely given up to her housekeeping and her son. 
If the bonnet-strings were shabby, the shape of it dated from 
three years back. Her shawl was fastened with a large broken 
needle, converted into a pin by means of a head of sealing- 
wax. 

This person was impatiently awaiting Pierrotin to commend 
her son to his care ; the lad was probably traveling alone for 
the first time, and she had accompanied him as far as the 
coach-office, as much out of mistrust as out of motherly de- 
votion. The son was in a way supplementary to his mother ; 
and without the mother the son would have seemed less com- 
prehensible. While the mother was content to display darned 
gloves, the son wore an olive-green overcoat, with sleeves rather 
short at the wrists, showing that he was still growing, as lads 


238 


A START IN LIFE . 


do between eighteen and nineteen. And his blue trousers, 
mended by the mother, showed that they had been new-seated 
whenever the tails of his coat parted maliciously behind. 

‘‘Do not twist your gloves up in that way,” she was saying 
when Pierrotin appeared, “you wear them shabby. Are you 
the driver? Ah! it is you, Pierrotin ! ” she went on, leaving 
her son for a moment and taking the coachman aside. 

“All well, Madame Clapart?” said Pierrotin, with an ex- 
pression on his face of mingled respect and familiarity. 

“Yes, Pierrotin. Take good care of my Oscar; he is 
traveling alone for the first time.” 

“Oh! if he is going alone to Monsieur Moreau’s ?*' 

said Pierrotin, to discover whether it were really there that 
the young fellow was being sent. 

“Yes,” said the mother. 

“ Has Madame Moreau a liking for him, then?” said the 
man, with a knowing look. 

“Oh! it will not be all roses for the poor boy; but his 
future prospects make it absolutely necessary that he should 
go.” 

Pierrotin was struck by this remark, and he did not like to 
confide his doubts concerning the steward to Madame Clapart; 
while she, on her part, dared not offend her son by giving 
Pierrotin such instructions as would put the coachman in the 
position of a mentor. 

During this brief hesitation on both sides, under cover of a 
few remarks on the weather, the roads, the stopping-places on 
the way, it will not be superfluous to explain the circumstances 
which had thrown Pierrotin and Madame Clapart together 
and given rise to their few words of confidential talk. Fre- 
quently — that is to say, three or four times a month — Pierro- 
tin, on his way to Paris, found the steward waiting at la Cave, 
and as the coach came up he beckoned to a gardener, who 
then helped Pierrotin to place on the coach one or two baskets 
full of such fruit and vegetables as were in season, with fowls, 


A START IN LITE. 


239 


eggs, butter, or game. Moreau always paid the carriage him- 
self, and gave him money enough to pay the excise duties at 
the barrier, if the baskets contained anything subject to the 
octroi .* These hampers and baskets never bore any label. 
The first time, and once for all, the steward had given the 
shrewd driver Madame Clapart’s address by word of mouth, 
desiring him never to trust anybody else with these precious 
parcels. Pierrotin, dreaming of an intrigue between some 
pretty girl and the agent, had gone as directed to No. 7 Rue 
de la Cerisaie, near the Arsenal, where he had seen the Mad- 
ame Clapart above described, instead of the fair young creature 
he had expected to find. 

Carriers, in the course of their day’s work, are initiated 
into many homes and trusted with many secrets; but the 
chances of the social system — a sort of deputy providence — 
having ordained that they should have no education or be 
unendowed with the gift of observation, it follows that they 
are not dangerous. Nevertheless, after many months Pierrotin 
could not account to himself for the friendship between 
Madame Clapart and Monsieur Moreau, from what little he 
saw of the household in the Rue de la Cerisaie. Though 
rents were not at that time high in the neighborhood of the 
Arsenal, Madame Clapart lived on the fourth floor on the 
inner side of a courtyard, in a house which had been in its 
day the residence of some magnate, at a period when the 
highest nobility in the kingdom lived on what had been the 
site of the Palais des Tournelles and the Hotel Saint-Paul. 
Toward the close of the sixteenth century the great families 
spread themselves over vast plots previously occupied by the 
King’s Palace Gardens, of which the record survives in the 
names of the streets, Rue de la Cerisaie, Rue Beautreillis, 
Rue des Lions, and so on. This apartment, of which every 
room was paneled with old wainscot, consisted of three 
rooms in a row — a dining-room, a drawing-room, and a bed- 
* Collectors of duties payable on goods brought into the cities. 


240 


A START IN LIFE. 


room. Above were the kitchen and Oscar’s room. Fronting 
the door that opened on to the landing was the door of another 
room at an angle to these, in a sort of square tower of mas- 
sive stone built out all the way up, and containing beside a 
wooden staircase. This tower room was where Moreau slept 
whenever he spent a night in Paris. 

Pierrotin deposited the baskets in the first room, where he 
could see six straw-bottomed, walnut-wood chairs, a table, and 
a sideboard ; narrow russet-brown curtains screened the win- 
dows. Afterward, when he was admitted to the drawing- 
room, he found it fitted with old furniture of the time of the 
Empire, much worn ; and there was no more of it at all than 
the landlord would insist upon as a guarantee for the rent. 
The carved panels, painted coarsely in distemper of a dull 
pinkish white, and in such a way as to fill up the mouldings 
and thicken the scrolls and figures, far from being ornamental, 
were positively depressing. The floor, which was never 
waxed, was as dingy as the boards of a schoolroom. If the 
carrier by chance disturbed Monsieur and Madame Clapart at 
a meal, the plates, the glasses, the most trifling things re- 
vealed miserable poverty ; they had plate, it is true, but the 
dishes and tureen, chipped and riveted like those of the very 
poor, were truly pitiable. Monsieur Clapart, in a dirty short 
coat, with squalid slippers on his feet, and always green spec- 
tacles to protect his eyes, as he took off a shabby peaked cap, 
five years old at least, showed a high-pointed skull, with a few 
dirty locks hanging about it, which a poet would have de- 
clined to call hair. This colorless creature looked a coward, 
and was probably a tyrant. 

In this dismal apartment, facing north, with no outlook but 
on a vine nailed out on the opposite wall, and a well in the 
corner of the yard, Madame Clapart gave herself the airs of a 
queen, and trod like a woman who could not go out on foot. 
Often, as she thanked Pierrotin, she would give him a look 
that might have touched the heart of a looker-on ; now and 


A START IN LIFE. 


241 


again she would slip a twelve-sou piece into his hand. Her 
voice in speech was very sweet. Oscar was unknown to Pier- 
rotin, for the boy had but just left school, and he had never 
seen him at home. 

This was the sad story which Pierrotin never could have - 
guessed, not even after questioning the gatekeeper’s wife, as 
he sometimes did — for the woman knew nothing beyond the 
fact that the Claparts’ rent was but two hundred and fifty 
francs; that they only had a woman in to help for a few hours 
in the morning ; that madame would sometimes do her own 
little bit of washing, and paid for every letter as it came as if 
she were afraid to let the account stand. 

There is no such thing — or, rather, there is very rarely such 
a thing — as a criminal who is bad all through. How much 
more rare it must be to find a man who is dishonest all 
through ! He may make up his accounts to his own advan- 
tage rather than his master’s, or pull as much hay as possible 
to his end of the manger ; but, even while making a little for- 
tune by illicit means, few men deny themselves the luxury of 
some good action. If only out of curiosity, as a contrast, or 
perhaps by chance, every man has known his hour of gener- 
osity ; he may speak of it as a mistake, and never repeat it ; 
still, once or twice in his life, he will have sacrificed to well- 
doing, as the veriest lout will sacrifice to the Graces. If 
Moreau’s sins can be forgiven him, will it not be for the sake 
of his constancy in helping a poor woman of whose favors he 
had once been proud, and under whose roof he had found 
refuge when in danger of his life? 

This woman, famous at the time of the Directoire for her 
connection with one of the five kings of the day, married, 
under his powerful patronage, a contractor who made millions, 
and then was ruined by Napoleon in 1802. This man, named 
Husson, was driven mad by his sudden fall from opulence to 
poverty ; he threw himself into the Seine, leaving his hand- 
some wife expecting a child. Moreau, who was on very inti- 
16 


242 


A START IN LIFE. 


mate terms with Madame Husson, was at the time under sen- 
tence of death, so he could not marry the widow, and was in 
fact obliged to leave France for a time. Madame Husson, 
only two-and-twenty, in her utter poverty, married an official 
named Clapart, a young man of twenty-seven — a man of 
promise, it was said. Heaven preserve women from handsome 
men of promise ! In those days officials rose rapidly from 
humble beginnings, for the Emperor had an eye for capable 
men. But Clapart, vulgarly handsome, indeed, had no brains. 
Believing Madame Husson to be very rich, he had affected a 
great passion ; he was simply a burden to her, never able, 
either then or later, to satisfy the habits she had acquired in 
her days of opulence. Clapart filled — badly enough — a small 
place in the Exchequer Office at a salary of not more than 
eighteen hundred francs a year. 

When Moreau came back to be with the Comte de SSrizy 
and heard of Madame Husson’s desperate plight, he succeeded, 
before his own marriage, in getting her a place as woman of 
the bedchamber in attendance on Madame, the Emperor’s 
mother. But in spite of such powerful patronage, Clapart 
could never get on ; his incapacity was too immediately 
obvious. 

In 1815 the brilliant Aspasia of the Directory, ruined by 
the Emperor’s overthrow, was left with nothing to live on but 
the salary of twelve hundred francs attached to a clerkship in 
the municipal offices, which the Comte de Serizy’s influence 
secured for Clapart. Moreau, now the only friend of a woman 
whom he had known as the possessor of millions, obtained for 
Oscar Husson a half-scholarship held by the Municipality of 
Paris in the College Henri IV., and he sent to the Rue de la 
Cerisaie, by Pierrotin, all he could decently offer to the im- 
poverished lady. 

Oscar was his mother’s one hope, her very life. The only 
fault to be found with the poor woman was her excessive fond- 
ness for this boy — his stepfather’s utter aversion. Oscar was, 


A START IN LIFE. 


243 


Unluckily, gifted with a depth of silliness which his mother 
could never suspect, in spite of Clapart’s ironical remarks. 
This silliness — or, to be accurate, this bumptiousness — dis- 
turbed Monsieur Moreau so greatly that he had begged 
Madame Clapart to send the lad to him for a month that he 
might judge for himself what line of life he would prove fit 
for. The steward had some thought of introducing Oscar 
one day to the count as his successor. 

But, to give God and the devil their due, it may here be 
observed as an excuse for Oscar’s preposterous conceit that he 
had been born under the roof of the Emperor’s mother ; in 
his earliest years his eyes had been dazzled by Imperial 
splendor. His impressible imagination had no doubt retained 
the memory of those magnificent spectacles, and an image of 
that golden time of festivities, with a dream of seeing them 
again. The boastfulness common to schoolboys, all possessed 
by desire to shine at the expense of their fellows, had in him 
been exaggerated by these memories of his childhood ; and at 
home perhaps his mother was rather too apt to recall with 
complacency the days when she had been a queen of Paris 
under the Directory. Oscar, who had just finished his studies, 
had, no doubt, often been obliged to assert himself as superior 
to the humiliations which the pupils who pay are always 
ready to inflict on the “charity-boys” when the scholars 
are not physically strong enough to impress them with their 
superiority. 

This mixture of departed splendor and faded beauty, of 
affection resigned to poverty, of hope founded on this son, 
and maternal blindness, with the heroic endurance of suffer- 
ing, made this mother one of the pathetic figures which in 
Paris deserve the notice of the observer. 

Pierrotin, who, of course, could not know how truly Moreau 
was attached to this woman, and she, on her part, to the man 
who had protected her in 1797, and was now her only friend, 


244 


A START IN LIFE. 


would not mention to her the suspicion that had dawned in 
his brain as to the danger which threatened Moreau. The 
manservant’s ominous speech : “ We have all enough to do to 
take care of ourselves,” recurred to his mind with the instinct 
of obedience to those whom he designated as “ first in the 
ranks.” Also, at this moment Pierrotin felt as many darts 
stinging his brain as there are five-francs pieces in a thousand 
francs. A journey of seven leagues seemed, no doubt, quite 
an undertaking to this poor mother, who in all her fine lady 
existence had hardly ever been beyond the barrier ; for Pier- 

rotin’s replies, “Yes, madame ; no, madame ” again and 

again, plainly showed that the man was only anxious to escape 
from her too numerous and useless instructions. 

“You will put the baggage where it cannot get wet if the 
weather should change? ” 

“I have a tarpaulin,” said Pierrotin; “and, you see, 
madame, it is carefully packed away.” 

“Oscar, do not stay more than a fortnight, even if you are 
pressed,” Madame Clapart went on, coming back to her son. 
“Do what you will, Madame Moreau will never take to you ; 
beside, you must get home by the end of September. We 
are going to Belleville, you know, to your Uncle Cardot’s.” 

“ Yes, mamma.” 

“Above all,” she added in a low tone, “never talk about 
servants. Always remember that Madame Moreau was a 
lady’s maid ” 

“ Yes, mamma.” 

Oscar, like all young people whose conceit is touchy, seemed 
much put out by these admonitions delivered in the gateway 
of the Silver Lion. 

“Well, good-by, mamma; we shall soon be off, the horse 
is put in.” 

The mother, forgeting that she was in the open street, 
hugged her Oscar, and taking a nice little roll out of her bag — 

“Here,” said she, “you were forgetting your bread and 


A START IN LIFE. 


245 


chocolate. Once more, my dear boy, do not eat anything at 
the inns ; you have to pay ten times the value for the smallest 
morsel." 

Oscar wished his mother farther as she stuffed the roll and 
the chocolate into his pocket. 

There were two witnesses to the scene, two young men a 
few years older than the newly fledged schoolboy, better 
dressed than he, and without their mothers, their demeanor, 
dress, and manner proclaiming the entire independence which 
is the end of every lad’s desire while still under direct mater- 
nal government. To Oscar, at this moment, these two young 
fellows epitomized the World. 

“Mamma! says he,” cried one of these strangers, with a 
laugh. 

The words reached Oscar’s ears, and in an impulse of in- 
tense irritation he shouted out — 

“ Good-by, mother ! ” 

It must be owned that Madame Clapart spoke rather too 
loud, and seemed to admit the passers-by to bear witness to 
her affectionate care. 

“ What on earth ails you, Oscar?” said the poor woman, 
much hurt. “ I do not understand you,” she added severely, 
fancying she could thus inspire him with respect — a common 
mistake with women who spoil their children. “ Listen, dear 
Oscar,” she went on, resuming her coaxing gentleness, “you 
have a propensity for talking to everybody, telling everything 
you know and everything you don’t know — out of brag and a 
young man’s foolish self-conceit. I beg you once more to 
bridle your tongue. You have not seen enough of life, my 
dearest treasure, to gauge the people you may meet, and there 
is nothing more dangerous than talking at random in a public 
conveyance. In a diligence well-bred persons keep silence.” 

The two young men, who had, no doubt, walked to the end 
of the yard and back, now made the sound of their boots 
heard once more under the gateway ; they might have heard 


246 


A START IN LIFE. 


this little lecture ; and so, to be quit of his mother, Oscar 
took heroic measures, showing how much self-esteem can 
stimulate the inventive powers. 

“Mamma,” said he, “ you are standing in a thorough 
draught, you will catch cold. Beside, I must take my place.” 

The lad had touched some tender chord, for his mother 
clasped him in her arms as if he were starting on some long 
voyage, and saw him into the chaise with tears in her eyes. 

“Do not forget to give five francs to the servants,” said 
she. “And write to me at least three times in the course of 
the fortnight. Behave discreetly, and remember all my in- 
structions. You have enough linen to need none being 
washed. And, above all, remember all Monsieur Moreau’s 
kindness; listen to him as to a father and follow his advice.” 

As he got into the chaise Oscar displayed a pair of blue 
stockings as his trousers slipped up, and the new seat to his 
trousers as his coat-tails parted. And the smile on the faces 
of the two young men, who did not fail to see these evidences 
of honorable poverty, was a fresh blow to Oscar’s self-esteem. 

“Oscar’s place is No. i,” said Madame Clapart to Pier- 
rotin. “ Settle yourself in the corner,” she went on, still 
gazing at her son with tender affection. 

Oh ! how much Oscar regretted his mother’s beauty, spoilt 
by misfortune and sorrow, and the poverty and self-sacrifice 
that hindered her from being nicely dressed. One of the 
youngsters — the one who wore boots and spurs — nudged the 
other with his elbow to point out Oscar’s mother, and the 
other twirled his mustache with an air, as much as to say : “A 
rather neat figure ! ” 

“How am I to get rid of my mother?” thought Oscar, 
looking quite anxious. 

“What is the matter?” said Madame Clapart. 

Oscar pretended not to hear, the wretch ! And, perhaps, 
under the circumstances, Madame Clapart showed want of 
tact ; but an absorbing passion is so selfish ! 


A START IN LIFE. 


247 


“ Georges, do you like traveling with children ? ” asked one 
of the young men of his friend. 

“ Yes, if they are weaned, and are called Oscar, and have 
chocolate to eat, my dear Amaury.” 

These remarks were exchanged in an undertone, leaving 
Oscar free to hear or not to hear them. His manner would 
show the young man what he might venture on with the lad 
to amuse himself in the course of the journey. Oscar would 
not hear. He looked round to see whether his mother, who 
weighed on him like a nightmare, was still waiting ; but, in- 
deed, he knew she was too fond of him to have deserted him 
yet. He not only involuntarily compared his traveling com- 
panion’s dress with his own, but he also felt that his mother’s 
costume counted for something as provoking the young men’s 
mocking smile. 

“ If only they would go ! ” thought he. 

Alas ! Amaury had just said to Georges as he struck the 
wheel of the chaise with his cane — 

“And you are prepared to trust your future career on board 
this frail vessel ? ” 

“Need must ! ” replied Georges in a fateful tone. 

Oscar heaved a sigh as he noted the youth’s hat, cocked 
cavalierly over one ear to show a fine head of fair hair elab- 
orately curled, while he, by his stepfather’s orders, wore his 
black hair in a brush above his forehead, cut quite short like 
a soldier’s. The vain boy’s face was round and chubby, 
bright with the color of vigorous health ; that of “ Georges” 
was long, delicate, and pale. This young man had a broad 
brow, and his chest filled out a shawl-pattern vest. As Oscar 
admired his tightly fitting iron-gray trousers and his overcoat, 
sitting closely to the figure, with Brandenburg braiding and 
oval buttons, he felt as if the romantic stranger, blessed with 
so many advantages, were making an unfair display of his 
superiority, just as an ugly woman is offended by the mere 
sight of a beauty. The ring of his spurred boot-heels, which 


248 


A START IN LIFE. 


the young man accentuated rather too much for Oscar’s liking, 
went to the boy’s heart. In short, Oscar was as uncomfortable 
in his clothes, home-made perhaps out of his stepfather’s old 
ones, as the other enviable youth was satisfied in his. 

“That fellow must have ten francs at least in his pocket,” 
thought Oscar. 

The stranger, happening to turn round, what were Oscar’s 
feelings when he discerned a gold chain about his neck — with 
a gold watch, no doubt, at the end of it. 

Living in the Rue de la Cerisaie since 1815, taken to and 
from school on his holidays by his stepfather Clapart, Oscar 
had never had any standard of comparison but his mother’s 
poverty-stricken household. Kept very strictly, by Moreau’s 
advice, he rarely went to the play, and then aspired no higher 
than to the Ambigu-Comique, where little elegance met his 
gaze, even if the absorbed attention a boy devotes to the stage 
had allowed him to study the house. His stepfather still wore 
his watch in a fob in the fashion of the Empire, with a heavy 
gold chain hanging over his stomach, and ending in a bunch 
of miscellaneous objects — seals, and a watch-key with a flat 
round top, in which was set a landscape in mosaic. Oscar, 
who looked on this out-of-date splendor as the ne plus ultra 
of luxury, was quite bewildered by this revelation of superior 
and less ponderous elegance. The young man also made an 
insolent display of a pair of good gloves, and seemed bent on 
blinding Oscar by his graceful handling of a smart cane with 
a gold knob. 

Oscar had just reached the final stage of boyhood in which 
trifles are the cause of great joys and great anguish, when a 
real misfortune seems preferable to a ridiculous costume ; and 
vanity, having no great interests in life to absorb it, centres 
in frivolities, and dress, and the anxiety to be thought a man. 
The youth magnifies himself, and his self-assertion is all the 
more marked because it turns on trifles; still, though he 
envies a well-dressed noodle, he can be also fired with enthu- 


A START IN LIFE. 


249 


6iasra for talent, and admire a man of genius. His faults, 
when they are not rooted in his heart, only show the exuber- 
ance of vitality and a lavish imagination. When a boy of 
nineteen, an only son, austerely brought up at home as a 
result of the poverty that weighs so cruelly on a clerk with 
twelve hundred francs’ salary, but worshiped by a mother, 
who for his sake endures the bitterest privations — when such 
a boy is dazzled by a youth of two-and-twenty, envies him his 
frogged coat lined with silk, his sham cashmere vest, and a 
tie slipped through a vulgar ring, is not this a mere peccadillo 
such as may be seen in every class of life in the inferior who 
envies his betters? 

Even a man of genius yields to this primitive passion. Did 
not Rousseau of Geneva envy Venture and Bade? 

But Oscar went on from the peccadillo to the real fault; 
he felt humiliated ; he owed his traveling companion a grudge ; 
and a secret desire surged up in his heart to show him that he 
was as good a man as he. 

The two young bucks walked to and fro, from the gateway 
to the stables and back, going out to the street ; and, as they 
turned on their heel, they each time looked at Oscar ensconced 
in his corner. Oscar, convinced that whenever they laughed 
it was at him, affected profound indifference. He began to 
hum the tune of a song then in fashion among the Liberals, 
“C'est la faute d Voltaire , c'est la faute d Rousseau .” (It is 
all the fault of Voltaire and Rousseau.) This assumption, no 
doubt, made them take him for some underling lawyer’s 
clerk. 

“ Why, perhaps he sings in the chorus at the opera ! ” said 
Amaury. 

Exasperated this time, Oscar bounded in his seat ; raising 
the back curtain, he said to Pierrotin — 

“ When are we to be off? ” 

“Directly,” said the man, who had his whip in his hand, 
but his eyes fixed on the Rue d’Enghien. 

I 


250 


A START IN LIFE . 


The scene was now enlivened by the arrival of a young 
man escorted by a perfect pickle of a boy, who appeared with 
a porter at their heels hauling a barrow by a strap. The young 
man spoke confidentially to Pierrotin, who wagged his head 
and hailed his stableman. The man hurried up to help unload 
the barrow, which contained, beside two trunks, pails, brushes, 
and boxes of strange shape, a mass of packets and utensils, 
which the younger of the two new-comers who had climbed 
to the box-seat stowed and packed away with such expedition 
that Oscar, smiling at his mother, who was now watching him 
from the other side of the street, failed to see any of the 
paraphernalia which might have explained to him in what 
profession his traveling companions were employed. The 
boy, about sixteen years of age, wore a holland blouse with a 
patent-leather belt ; his cap, knowingly stuck on one side, 
proclaimed him a merry youth, as did the picturesque disorder 
of his curly brown hair tumbling about his shoulders. A 
black silk tie marked a black line on a very white neck, and 
seemed to heighten the brightness of his gray eyes. The restless 
vivacity of a sunburnt, rosy face, the shape of his full lips, 
his prominent ears, and his turn-up nose — every feature of his 
face showed the bantering wit of a Figaro and the recklessness 
of youth, while the quickness of his gestures and saucy 
glances revealed a keen intelligence, early developed by the 
practice of a profession taken up in boyhood. This boy, 
whom art or nature had already made a man, seemed in- 
different to the question of dress, as though he were conscious 
of some intrinsic moral worth ; for he looked at his unpolished 
boots as if he thought them rather a joke, and at his plain 
drill trousers to note the stains on them, but rather to study 
the effect than to hide them. 

“ I have acquired a fine tone ! ” said he, giving himself a 
shake, and addressing his companion. 

The expression of the senior showed some authority over 
this youngster, in whom experienced eyes would at once have 


A START IN LIFE . 


251 


discerned the jolly art student, known in French studio slang 
as a rapin. 

“Behave, Mistigris ! ”* replied the master, calling him no 
doubt by a nickname bestowed on him in the studio. 

The elder traveler was a slight and pallid young fellow, 
with immensely thick black hair in quite fantastic disorder ; 
but this abundant hair seemed naturally necessary to a very 
large head with a powerful forehead that spoke of precocious 
intelligence. His curiously puckered face, too peculiar to be 
called ugly, was as hollow as though this singular young man 
were suffering either from some chronic malady or from the 
privations of extreme poverty — which is indeed a terrible 
chronic malady — or from sorrows too recent to have been for- 
gotten. 

His clothes, almost in keeping with those of Mistigris in 
proportion to his age and dignity, consisted of a much-worn 
coat of a dull green color, shabby, but quite clean and well 
brushed, a black vest buttoned to the neck, as the coat was 
too, only just showing a red handkerchief round his throat. 
Black trousers, as shabby as the coat, hung loosely round his 
lean legs. His boots were muddy, showing that he had come 
far, and on foot. With one swift glance the artist took in the 
depths of the hostelry of the Silver Lion, the stables, the tones 
of color, and every detail, and he looked at Mistigris, who had 
imitated him, with an ironical twinkle. 

“Rather nice ! ” said Mistigris. 

“Yes, very nice,” replied the other. 

“We are still too early,” said Mistigris. “ Couldn’t we 
snatch a toothful? My stomach, like all nature, abhors a 
vacuum ! ” 

“ Have we time to get a cup of coffee ? ” said the artist, in 
a pleasant voice, to Pierrotin. 

“Well, don’t be long,” said Pierrotin. 

“We have a quarter of an hour,” added Mistigris, thus re- 
* The ace of clubs in the game of mouche. 


252 


A START IN LIFE. 


vealing the genius for inference, which is characteristic of the 
Paris art student. 

The couple disappeared. Just then nine o’clock struck in 
the inn kitchen. Georges thought it only fair and reasonable 
to appeal to Pierrotin. 

“I say, my good friend, when you are the proud possessor 
of such a shandrydan as this,” and he rapped the wheel with 
his cane, “you should at least make a merit of punctuality. 
The deuce is in it ! we do not ride in that machine for our 
pleasure, and business must be devilish pressing before we trust 
our precious selves in it ! And that old hack you call Rougeot 
will certainly not pick up lost time ! ” 

“ We will harness on Bichette while those two gentlemen 
are drinking their coffee,” replied Pierrotin. “Go on, you,” 
he added to the stableman, “and see if old Leger means to 
come with us ” 

“ Where is your old Leger? ” asked Georges. 

“Just opposite at Number 50; he couldn’t find room in the 
Beaumont coach,” said Pierrotin to his man, paying no heed 
to Georges, and going off himself in search of Bichette. 

Georges shook hands with his friend and got into the chaise, 
after tossing in a large portfolio, with an air of much im- 
portance; this he placed under the cushion. He took the 
opposite corner to Oscar. 

“This ‘ old Leger ’ bothers me,” said he. 

“They cannot deprive us of our places,” said Oscar. 
“ Mine is No. 1.” 

“And mine No. 2,” replied Georges. 

Just as Pierrotin reappeared, leading Bichette, the stable- 
man returned, having in tow a huge man weighing about two 
hundred and forty pounds, apparently. 

Old Leger was of the class of farmer who, with an enormous 
stomach and broad shoulders, wears a powdered queue and 
a light coat of blue linen. His white gaiters were tightly 
strapped above the knee over corduroy breeches, and finished 


A START IN LIFE . 


253 


off with silver buckles. His hobnailed shoes weighed each a 
couple of pounds. In his hand he carried a little, knotted 
red cane, very shiny, and with a heavy knob, secured round 
his wrist by a leather thong. 

“And is it you who are known as old Leger?”* said 
Georges gravely as the farmer tried to lift his foot to the step 
of the chaise. 

“At your service,” said the farmer, showing him a face 
rather like that of Louis XVIII., with a flit, red jowl, while 
above it rose a nose which in any other face would have 
seemed enormous. His twinkling eyes were deep set in rolls 
of fat. 

“ Come, lend a hand, my boy,” said he to Pierrotin. 

The farmer was hoisted in by the driver and the stableman 
to a shout of “ Yo, heave ho ! ” from Georges. 

“ Oh ! I am not going far ; I am only going to la Cave ! ” 
said Farmer Light , answering a jest with good humor. In 
France everybody understands a joke. 

“Get into the corner,” said Pierrotin. “There will be 
six of you.” 

“ And your other horse ? ” asked Georges. “Is it as fabu- 
lous as the third horse of a post-chaise ? ” 

“There it is, master,” said Pierrotin, pointing to the little 
mare that had come up without calling. 

“He calls that insect a horse ! ” said Georges, astonished. 

“Oh, she is a good one to go, is that little mare,” said the 
farmer, who had taken his seat. “ Morning, gentlemen. 
Are we going to weigh anchor, Pierrotin ?” 

“ Two of my travelers are getting a cup of coffee,” said the 
driver. 

The young man with the hollow cheeks and his follower 
now reappeared. 

“ Come, let us get off,” was now the universal cry. 

“We are off — we are off!” replied Pierrotin. “Let her 

* Liger — light. 


254 


A START IN LIFE. 


go,” he added to his man, who kicked away the stones that 
scotched the wheels. 

Pierrotin took hold of Rougeot’s bridle with an encourag- 
ing “ Tclk, tclk ,” to warn the two steeds to pull themselves 
together ; and, torpid as they evidently were, they started 
the vehicle, which Pierrotin brought to a standstill in front 
of the gate of the Silver Lion. After this purely preliminary 
manoeuvre, he again looked down the Rue d’Enghien, and 
vanished, leaving the conveyance in the care of the stableman. 

“ Well ! Is your governor subject to these attacks? ” Mis- 
tigris asked of the man. 

“ He is gone to fetch his oats away from the stable,” 
replied the Auvergnat, who was up to all the arts in use to 
pacify the impatience of travelers. 

‘‘After all,” said Mistigris, “ time is a great plaster.” 

At that time there was in the Paris studios a mania for dis- 
torting proverbs. It was considered a triumph to hit on some 
change of letters or some rhyming word which should suggest 
an absurd meaning, or even make it absolute nonsense.* 

“And Paris was not gilt in a play,” replied his comrade. 

Pierrotin now returned, accompanied by the Comte de 
Serizy, round the corner of the Rue de l’Echiquier; they had 
no doubt had a short conversation. 

“ Pere Leger, would you mind giving your place up to Mon- 
sieur le Comte? It will trim the chaise better.” 

“And we shall not be off for an hour yet if you go on like 
this,” said Georges. “You will have to take out that infernal 
bar we have had such plaguey trouble to fit in, and everybody 
will have to get out for the last comer. Each of us has a 
right to the place he booked. What number is this gentle- 
man’s? Come, call them over. Have you a way-bill? Do 
you keep a book? Which is Monsieur le Comte’s place? 
Count of what ? ” 

* To translate these not always funny jests is impossible. I have gen- 
erally tried for no more than an equivalent rendering. — Translator. 


A START IN LIFE. 


255 


“ Monsieur le Comte,” said Pierrotin, visibly disturbed, 
“you will not be comfortable.” 

“ Can’t you count, man? ” said Mistigris. “ Short counts 
make tall friends.” 

“ Mistigris, behave ! ” said his master quite seriously. 

Monsieur de Serizy was supposed by his fellow-travelers to 
be some respectable citizen called Lecomte. 

“Do not disturb anybody,” said the count to Pierrotin; 
“ I will sit in front by you.” 

“Now, Mistigris,” said the young artist, “remember the 
respect due to age. You don’t know how dreadfully old you 
may live to be. Manners take the van. Give up your place 
to the gentleman.” 

Mistigris opened the apron of the chaise, and jumped out 
as nimbly as a frog into the water. 

“ You cannot sit as rabbit , august old man ! ” said he to 
Monsieur de Serizy. 

“ Mistigris, Tarts are the end of man,” said his master. 

“Thank you, monsieur,” said the count to the artist, by 
whose side he now took his seat. And the statesman looked 
with a sagacious eye at the possessors of the back seat, in a 
way that deeply aggrieved Oscar and Georges. 

“We are an hour and a quarter behind time,” remarked 
Oscar. 

“ People who want a chaise to themselves should book all 
the places,” added Georges. 

The Comte de Serizy, quite sure now that he was not recog- 
nized, made no reply, but sat with the expression of a good- 
natured tradesman. 

“And if you had been late, you would have liked us to 
wait for you, I suppose? ” said the farmer to the two young 
fellows. 

Pierrotin war ( looking out toward the Porte Saint-Denis, and 
paused for a moment before mounting to the hard box-seat, 
where Mistigris was kicking his heels. 


256 


A START IN LIFE. 


“ If you are still waiting for somebody, I am not the last/* 
remarked the count. 

‘‘That is sound reasoning,” said Mistigris. 

Georges and Oscar laughed very rudely. 

“The old gentleman is not strikingly original,” said 
Georges to Oscar, who was enchanted with this apparent 
alliance. 

When Pierrotin had settled himself in his place, he again 
looked back, but failed to discern in the crowd the two trav- 
elers who were wanting to fill up his cargo. 

“ By the mass, but a couple more passengers would not 
come amiss,” said he. 

“Look here, I have not paid; I shall get right out,” said 
Georges in alarm. 

“Why, whom do you expect, Pierrotin?” said Leger. 

Pierrotin cried “ Gee ! ” in a particular tone, which Rou- 
geot and Bichette knew to mean business at last, and they 
trotted off toward the hill at a brisk pace, which, however, 
soon grew slack. 

The count had a very red face, quite scarlet indeed, with 
an inflamed spot here and there, and set off all the more by 
his perfectly white hair. By any but quite young men this 
complexion would have been understood as the inflammatory 
effect on the blood of incessant work. And, indeed, these 
angry pimples so much disfigured his really noble face that 
only close inspection could discern in his greenish eyes all 
the acumen of the judge, the subtlety of the statesman, and 
the learning of the legislator. His face was somewhat flat; 
the nose especially looked as if it had been flattened. His 
hat hid the breadth and beauty of his brow ; and, in fact, there 
was some justification for the laughter of these heedless lads, 
in the strange contrast between hair as white as silver and 
thick, bushy eyebrows still quite black. The count, who 
wore a long, blue overcoat, buttoned to the chin in military 


A START IN LIFE. 


257 


fashion, had a white handkerchief round his neck, cotton- 
wool in his ears, and a high shirt-collar, showing a square 
white corner on each cheek. His black trousers covered his 
boots, of which the tip scarcely showed ; he had no ribbon at 
his buttonhole, and his hands were hidden by his doeskin 
gloves. Certainly there was nothing in this man which could 
betray to the lads that he was a peer of France, and one of 
the most useful men living to his country. 

Old Pere Leger had never seen the count, who, on the other 
hand, knew him only by name. Though the count, as he 
got into the chaise, cast about him the inquiring glance which 
had so much annoyed Oscar and Georges, it was because he 
was looking for his notary’s clerk, intending to impress on 
him the need for the greatest secrecy in case he should have 
been compelled to travel, like himself, by Pierrotin’s convey- 
ance. But he was reassured by Oscar’s appearance and by 
that of the old farmer, and, above all, by the air of aping the 
military, with his mustache and his style generally, which 
stamped Georges an adventurer; and he concluded that his 
note had reached Maitre Alexandre Crottat in good time. 

“ Pere Leger,” said Pierrotin as they came to the steep hill 
in the Faubourg Saint-Denis, at the Rue de la Fidelity, “sup- 
pose we were to walk a bit, heh ? ” On hearing the name, 
the count observed — 

“ I will get out too ; we must ease the horses.” 

“Oh! If you go on at this rate, we shall do fourteen 
miles in fifteen days ! ” exclaimed Georges. 

“Well, is it any fault of mine,” said Pierrotin, “if a 
passenger wishes to get out ?” 

“ I will give you ten louis if you keep my secret as I bid 
you,” said the count, taking Pierrotin by the arm. 

“ Oh, ho ! My thousand francs ! ” thought Pierrotin, after 
giving Monsieur de Serizy a wink, conveying, “Trust me ! ” 

Oscar and Georges remained in the chaise. 

“Look here, Pierrotin— since Pierrotin you are,” cried 
17 


258 


A START IN LIFE . 


Georges, when the travelers had gotten into the chaise again at 
the top of the hill, “ if you are going no faster than this, say 
so. I will pay my fare to Saint-Denis, and hire a nag there, 
for I have important business on hand, which will suffer from 
delay.” 

“Oh! he will get on, never fear,” replied the farmer. 
“And the road is not a long one.” 

“ I am never more than half an hour late,” answered Pier- 
rotin. 

“ Well, well, you are not carting the pope, I suppose,” said 
Georges, “ so hurry up a little.” 

“You ought not to show any favor,” said Mistigris; “ and 
if you are afraid of jolting this gentleman ” — and he indicated 
the count — “ that is not fair.” 

“All men are equal in the eye of the coucou ,” said Georges, 
“as all Frenchmen are in the eye of the Charter.” 

“Be quite easy,” said old Leger, “ we shall be at la Cha- 
pelle yet before noon.” La Chapelle is a village close to the 
Barriere Saint-Denis. 

Those who have traveled know that persons thrown together 
in a public conveyance do not immediately amalgamate; 
unless -under exceptional circumstances, they do not converse 
till they are well on their way. This silent interval is spent 
partly in reciprocal examination, and partly in finding each 
his own place and taking possession of it. The soul, as much 
as the body, needs to find*its balance. When each, severally, 
supposes that he has made an accurate guess at his companion's 
age, profession, and temper, the most talkative first opens a 
conversation, which is taken up all the more eagerly because 
all feel the need for cheering the way and dispelling the dull- 
ness. 

This, at least, is what happens in a French coach. In 
other countries manners are different. The English pride 
themselves on never opening their lips ; a German is dull in a 
coach ; Italians are too cautious to chat ; the Spaniards have 


A START IN LIFE. 


259 


almost ceased to have any coaches ; and the Russians have no 
roads. So it is only in the ponderous French diligence that 
the passengers amuse each other, in the gay and gossiping 
nation where each one is eager to laugh and display his humor, 
where everything is enlivened by raillery, from the misery of 
the poorest to the solid interests of the upper middle-class. 
The police do little to check the license of speech, and the 
gallery of the Chambers has made discussion fashionable. 

When a youngster of two-and-twenty, like the young gen- 
tleman who was known so far by the name of Georges, has a 
ready wit, he is strongly tempted, especially in such circum- 
stances as these, to be reckless in the use of it. In the first 
place, Georges was not slow to come to the conclusion that he 
was the superior man of the party. He decided that the count 
was a manufacturer of the second class, setting him down as a 
cutler; the shabby-looking youth attended by Mistigris he 
thought but a greenhorn, Oscar a perfect simpleton, and the 
farmer a capital butt for a practical joke* Having thus taken 
the measure of all his traveling companions, he determined to 
amuse himself at their expense. 

“ Now,” thought he, as the coucou rolled down the hill from 
la Chapelle toward the plain of Saint-Denis, “shall I pass 
myself off as Etienne or as Beranger? No, these bumpkins 
have never heard of either. A Carbonaro ? The devil ! I 
might be nabbed. One of Marshal Ney’s sons? Pooh, what 
could I make of that ? Tell them the story of my father’s 
death ? That would hardly be funny. Suppose I were to have 
come back from the Government colony in America? They 
might take me for a spy, and regard me with suspicion. I 
will be a Russian prince in disguise ; I will cram them with 
fine stories about the Emperor Alexander ! Or if I pretended 
to be Cousin, the Professor of Philosophy? How I could 
mystify them ! No, that limp creature with the towzled hair 
looks as if he might have kicked his heels at lecture at the 
Sorbonne. Oh, why didn’t I think sooner of trotting them 


260 


A START IN LIFE. 


out ? I can imitate an Englishman so well, I might have been 
Lord Byron traveling incog. Hang it ! I have missed my 
chance. The executioner’s son ? Not a bad way of clearing 
a space at breakfast. Oh ! I know ! I will have been in 
command of the troops under Ali, the Pasha of Janina.” 

While he was lost in these meditations, the chaise was 
making its way through the clouds of dust which constantly 
blow up from the side-paths of this much-trodden road. 

“ What a dust ! ” said Mistigris. 

“King Henri is dead,” retorted his comrade. “If you 
said it smelt of vanilla now, you would hit on a new idea ! ” 

“You think that funny,” said Mistigris. “Well, but it does 
now and then remind me of vanilla.” 

“In the East ” Georges began, meaning to concoct a 

story. 

“In the least ” said Mistigris* master, taking up 

Georges. 

“In the East, I said, from whence I have just returned,” 
Georges repeated, “ the dust smells very sweet. But here it 
smells of nothing unless it is wafted up from such a manure- 
heap as this.” 

“You have just returned from the East?” said Mistigris, 
with a sly twinkle. 

“And, you see, Mistigwis, the gentleman is so tired that 
what he now wequires is west,” drawled his master. 

“ You are not much sunburnt,” said Mistigris. 

“ Oh ! I am but just out of bed after three months’ illness, 
caused, the ‘learned doctors say, by an attack of suppressed 
plague.” 

“You have had the plague? ” cried the count, with a look 
of horror. “Pierrotin, put me out.” 

“Get on, Pierrotin,” said Mistigris. “You hear that the 
plague was suppressed,” he went on, addressing Monsieur de 
Serizy. “ It was the sort of plague that only comes out in 
the course of conversation.” 


A START IN LIFE . 


261 


“ The plague of which one merely says, * Plague take it ! ’ ” 
cried the artist. 

“ Or plague take the man ! ” added Mistigris. 

“ Mistigris,” said his master, “ I shall put you out to walk 
if you get into mischief. So you have been in the East, 
monsieur? ” he went on, turning to Georges. 

“ Yes, monsieur. First in Egypt and then in Greece, 
where I served under Ali Pasha of Janina, with whom I had a 
desperate row. The climate is too much for most men ; and 
the excitements of all kinds that are part of an Oriental life 
wrecked my liver.” 

“Oh, ho, a soldier?” said the burly farmer. “Why, 
how old are you?” 

“I am nine-and-twenty,” said Georges, and all his fellow- 
travelers looked at him. “At eighteen I served as a private 
in the famous campaign of 1813; but I only was present at 
the battle of Hanau, where I won the rank of sergeant-major. 
In France, at Montereau, I was made sub-lieutenant, and I 
was decorated by — no spies here? — by the Emperor.” 

“And you do not wear the cross of your order?” said 
Oscar. 

“ A cross given by the present set ?* Thank you for nothing. 
Beside, who that is anybody wears his decorations when 
traveling? Look at monsieur,” he went on, indicating the 
Comte de Serizy, “ I will bet you anything you please ” 

“Betting anything you please is the same thing in France 
) as not betting at all,” said Mistigris* master. 

“ I will bet you anything you please,” Georges repeated 
pompously, “ that he is covered with stars.’* 

“I have, in fact,** said Monsieur de Serizy, with a laugh, 
“ the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor, the Grand Cross 
of Saint-Andrew of Russia, of the Eagle of Prussia, of the 
Order of the Annunciada of Sardinia, and of the Golden 
Fleece.” 


* Ceux-ci. 


262 


A START TV LIFE. 


“ Is that all ? ” said Mistigris. “And it all rides in a public 
chaise ? ” 

“ He is going it, is the brick red man?” said Georges in a 
whisper to Oscar. “What did I tell you?” he remarked 
aloud. “I make no secret of it, I am devoted to the 
Emperor ! ” 

“I served under him,” said the count. 

“ And what a man ! Wasn’t he ? ” cried Georges. 

“A man to whom I am under great obligations,” replied 
the count, with a well-affected air of stupidity. 

“ For your crosses ? ” asked Mistigris. 

“And what quantities of snuff he took! ” replied Monsieur 
de Serizy. 

“ Yes, he carried it loose in his waistcoat pockets.” 

“Sol have been told,” said the farmer, with a look of 
incredulity. 

“And not only that, but he chewed and smoked,” Georges 
went on. “ I saw him smoking in the oddest way at Water- 
loo when Marshal Soult lifted him up bodily and flung him 
into his traveling carriage, just as he had seized a musket and 
wanted to charge the English ! ” 

“So you were at Waterloo?” said Oscar, opening his eyes 
very wide. 

“Yes, young man, I went through the campaign of 1815. 
At Mont Saint-Jean I was made captain, and I retired on the 
Loire when we were disbanded. But, on my honor, I was 
sick of France, and I could not stay. No, I should have got 
myself into some scrape. So I went off with two or three 
others of the same sort, Selves, Besson, and some more, who 
are in Egypt to this day in the service of Mohammed Pasha, 
and a queer fellow he is, I can tell you ! He was a tobacco- 
nist at la Cavalle, and is now on the way to be a reigning 
prince. You have seen him in Horace Yernet’s picture of the 
‘Massacre of the Mamelukes.* Such a handsome man ! I 
never would abjure the faith of my fathers and adopt Islam ; 


A START IN LIFE. 263 

all the more because the ceremony involves a surgical opera- 
tion for which I had no liking. Beside, no one respects a 
renegade. If they had offered me a hundred thousand francs 
a year, then, indeed — and yet — no. The pasha made me a 
present of a thousand talari." 

“ How much is that? ” asked Oscar, who was all ears. 

“Oh, no great matter. The talaro is much the same as a 
five-franc piece. And, on my honor, I did not earn enough 
to pay for the vices I learned in that thundering vile country 
— if you can call it a country. I cannot live now without 
smoking my narghileh twice a day, and it is very expensive 
and ” 

“And what is Egypt like?” asked Monsieur de Serizy. 

“Egypt is all sand,” replied Georges, quite undaunted. 
“ There is nothing green but the Nile valley. Draw a green 
strip on a sheet of yellow paper, and there you have Egypt. 
The Egyptians, the fellaheen, have, I may remark, one great 
advantage over us ; there are no gendarmes. You may go 
from one end of Egypt to the other, and you will not find 
one.” 

“But I suppose there are a good many Egyptians,” said 
Mistigris. 

“Not so many as you would think,” answered Georges. 
“ There are more Abyssinians, Giaours, Vechabites, Bedouins, 
and Copts. However, all these creatures are so very far from 
amusing that I was only too glad to embark on a Genoese 
polacra, bound for the Ionian Islands to take up powder and 
ammunition for Ali of Tebelen. As you know, the English 
sell powder and ammunition to all nations, to the Turks and 
the Greeks ; they would sell them to the devil if the devil 
had money. So from Zante we were to luff up to the coast of 
Greece. 

“And, I tell you, take me as you see me, the name of 
Georges is famous in those parts. I am the grandson of that 
famous Czerni- Georges who made war on the Porte; but in- 


264 


A START IN LIFE. 


stead of breaking it down, he was unluckily smashed up. 
His son took refuge in the house of the French Consul at 
Smyrna, and came to Paris in 1792, where he died before I, 
his seventh child, was born. Our treasure was stolen from us 
by a friend of my grandfather’s, so we were ruined. My 
mother lived by selling her diamonds one by one, till in 1799 
she married Monsieur Yung, a contractor, and my stepfather. 
But my mother died ; I quarreled with my stepfather, who, 
between ourselves, is a rascal ; he is still living, but we never 
meet. The wretch left us all seven to our fate without a word, 
orbit or sup. And that is how, in 1813, in sheer despair, I 
went off as a conscript. You cannot imagine with what joy 
Ali of Tebelen hailed the grandson of Czerni-Georges. Here 
I call myself simply Georges. The pasha gave me a seraglio 
for ” 

“ You had a seraglio? ” said Oscar. 

“ Were you a pasha with many tails?” asked Mistigris. 

“ How is it that you don’t know that there is but one sultan 
who can create pashas? ” said Georges, “ and my friend Tebe- 
len — for we were friends, like two Bourbons — was a rebel 
against the padischah. You know — or you don’t know — that 
the grand seignior’s correct title is padischah, and not the 
grand turk or the sultan. 

“ Do not suppose that a seraglio is any great matter. You 
might just as well have a flock of goats. Their women are 
great fools, and I like the grisettes of the Chaumiere (cottages) 
at Mont*Parnasse a thousand times better.” 

“And they are much nearer,” said the Comte de Serizy. 

“ These women of the seraglio never know a word of 
French, and language is indispensable to an understanding. 
Ali gave me five lawful wives and ten slave girls. At Janina 
that was a mere nothing. In the East, you see, it is very bad 
style to have wives ; you have them, but as we here have our 
Voltaire and our Rousseau; who ever looks into his Voltaire 
or his Rousseau? Nobody. And yet it is quite the right 


A START IN LIFE. 


265 


thing to be jealous. You may tie a woman up in a sack and 
throw her into the water on a mere suspicion by an article of 
their Code.” 

“ Did you throw any in ? ” 

“ I ? What ! a Frenchman ! I was devoted to them.” 

Whereupon Georges twirled up his mustache, and assumed 
a pensive air. 

By this time they were at Saint-Denis, and Pierrotin drew 
up at the door of the inn where the famous cheese-cakes are 
sold, and where all travelers call. The count, really puzzled 
by the mixture of truth and nonsense in Georges’ rhodomon- 
tade, jumped into the carriage again, looked under the cushion 
for the portfolio which Pierrotin had told him that this mys- 
terious youth had bestowed there, and saw on it in gilt letters 
the words, “ Maitre Crottat, Notaire.” The count at once 
took the liberty of opening the case, fearing, with good reason, 
that if he did not, Farmer Leger might be possessed with 
similar curosity; and taking out the deed relating to the 
Moulineaux farm, he folded it up, put it in the side-pocket of 
his coat, and came back to join his fellow-travelers. 

“This Georges is neither more nor less than Crottat’s junior 
clerk. I will congratulate his master, who ought to have sent 
his head-clerk.” 

From the respectful attention of the farmer and Oscar, 
Georges perceived that in them at least he had two ardent 
admirers. Of course, he put on lordly airs; he treated them 
to cheese-cakes and a glass of Alicante, and offered the same 
to Mistigris and his master, which they refused, asking them 
their names on the strength of this munificence. 

“Oh, monsieur,” said the elder, “I am not the proud 
owner of so illustrious a name as yours, and I have not come 
home from Asia.” The count, who had made haste to get 
back to the vast inn kitchen, so as to excite no suspicions, 
came in time to hear the end of the reply. “I am simply a 
poor painter just returned from Rome, where I went at the 


26C) 


A START IN LIFE. 


expense of the Government after winning the Grand Prize five 
years ago. My name is Schinner.” 

“ Halloo, master, may I offer you a glass of Alicante and 
some cheese-cakes?” cried Georges to the count. 

“Thank you, no,” said the count. “I never come out 
till I have had my cup of coffee and cream.” 

“And you never eat anything between meals? How 
Marais , Place Royale , lie Saint-Louis /” exclaimed Georges. 
“When he crammed us just now about his orders, I fancied 
him better fun than he is,” he went on in a low voice to the 
painter; “but we will get him on to that subject again — 
the little tallow-chandler. Come, boy,” said he to Oscar, 
“drink the glass that was poured out for the grocer, it will 
make your mustache grow.” 

Oscar, anxious to play the man, drank the second glass of 
wine, and ate three more .cheese-cakes. 

“Very good wine it is!” said old Leger, smacking his 
tongue. 

“And all the better,” remarked Georges, “because it 
comes from Bercy. I have been to Alicante, and, I tell you, 
this is no more like the wine of that country than my arm is 
like a windmill. Our manufactured wines are far better than 
the natural products. Come, Pierrotin, have a glass. What 
a pity it is that your horses cannot each drink one ; we 
should get on faster ! ’ ’ 

“Oh, that is unnecessary, as I have a gray horse already,” 
said Pierrotin (gris, which means gray, meaning also screwed ). 

Oscar, as he heard the vulgar pun, thought Pierrotin a 
marvel of wit. 

“Off! ” cried Pierrotin, cracking his whip, as soon as the 
passengers had once more packed themselves into the vehicle. 

It was by this time eleven o’clock. The weather, which 
had been rather dull, now cleared ; the wind swept away the 
clouds; the blue sky shone out here and there; and by the 


A START IN LIFE . 


267 


time Pierrotin’s chaise was fairly started on the ribbon of 
road between Saint-Denis and Pierrefitte, the sun had finally 
drunk up the last filmy haze that hung like a diaphanous veil 
over the views from this famous suburb. 

“ Well, and why did you throw over your friend the 
pasha?” said the farmer to Georges. 

“ He was a very queer customer,” replied Georges, with an 
air of hiding many mysteries. “Only think, he put me in 
command of his cavalry ! Very well ” 

“ That,” thought poor Oscar, “ is why he wears spurs.” 

“At that time, Ali of Tebelen wanted to rid himself of 
Chosrew Pasha, another queer fish. Chaureff you call him 
here, but in Turkey they call him Cosserev. You must have 
read in the papers at the time that old Ali had beaten Chos- 
rew and pretty soundly, too. Well, but for me, Ali would 
have been done for some days sooner. I led the right wing, 
and I saw Chosrew, the old sneak, just charging the centre — 
oh, yes, I can tell you, as straight and steady a move as if he 
had been Murat. Good ! I took my time, and I charged at 
full speed, cutting Chosrew’s column in two parts, for he had 
pushed through our centre, and had no cover. You under- 
stand — 

“After it was all over Ali fairly kissed me.” 

“Is that the custom in the East ?’ 1 said the Comte de 
Serizy, with a touch of irony. 

“Yes, monsieur, as it is everywhere,” answered the painter. 

“ We drove Chosrew back over thirty leagues of country — 
like a hunt, I tell you,” Georges went on. “ Splendid horse- 
men are the Turks. Ali gave me yataghans, guns, and swords : 
‘Take as many as you like.’ When we got back to the capi- 
tal, that incredible creature made proposals to me that did 
not suit my views at all. He wanted to adopt me as his 
favorite, his heir. But I had had enough of the life ; for, 
after all, Ali of Tebelen was a rebel against the Porte, and I 
thought it wiser to clear out. But I must do Monsieur de 


208 


A START IN LIFE. 


Tebelen justice, he loaded me with presents ; diamonds, ten 
thousand talari, a thousand pieces of gold, a fair Greek girl 
for a page, a little Arnaute maid for company, and an Arab 
horse. Well, there ! Ali, the Pasha of Janina, is an unappre- 
ciated man ; he lacks a historian. Nowhere but in the East 
do you meet with these iron souls who, for twenty years, 
strain every nerve, only to be able to take a revenge one fine 
morning. 

“ In the first place, he had the grandest white beard you 
ever saw, and a hard, stern face — ” 

“ But what became of your treasure ? ” asked the farmer. 

“Ah! there you are! Those people have no State funds 
nor Bank of France; so I packed my money-bags on loard 
a Greek tartane, which was captured by the capitan-pasha 
himself. Then I myself, as you see me, was within an ace of 
being impaled at Smyrna. Yes, on my honor, but for Mon- 
sieur de Riviere, the ambassador, who happened to be on the 
spot, I should have been executed as an ally of Ali Pasha’s. 
I saved my head, or I could not speak so plainly; but as for 
the ten thousand talari, the thousand pieces of gold, and the 
weapons, oh ! that was all swallowed down by that greedy- 
guts the capitan-pasha. My position was all the more ticklish 
because the capitan-pasha was Chosrew himself. After the 
dressing he had had, the scamp had got this post, which is 
equal to that of high admiral in France.” 

“But he had been in the cavalry, as I understood?” said 
old Leger, who had been listening attentively to this long 
story. 

“Dear me, how little the East is understood in the De- 
partment of Seine et Oise!” exclaimed Georges. “Mon- 
sieur, the Turks are like that. You are a farmer, the padis- 
chah makes you a field-marshal ; if you do not fulfill your 
duties to his satisfaction, so much the worse for you. Off 
with your head ! That is his way of dismissing you. A 
gardener is made prefect, and a prime minister is a private 


A START IN LIFE. 


269 


once more. The Ottomans know no laws of promotion or 
hierarchy. Chosrew, who had been a horseman, was now a 
sailor. The Padischah Mohammed had instructed him to fall 
on Ali by sea; and he had, in fact, mastered him, but only by 
the help of the English, who got the best of the booty, the 
thieves ! They laid hands on the treasure. 

“ This Chosrew, who had not forgotten the riding-lesson I 
had given him, recognized me at once. As you may suppose, 
I was settled — oh ! done for ! — if it had not occurred to me 
to appeal, as a Frenchman and a troubadour, to Monsieur de 
Riviere. The ambassador, delighted to assert himself, de- 
manded my release. The Turks have this great merit, they 
are as ready to let you go as to cut off your head ; they are 
indifferent to everything. The French consul, a charming 
man, and a friend of Chosrew’s, got him to restore two 
thousand talari, and his name, I may say, is graven on my 
heart ” 

“And his name ?” asked Monsieur de Serizy. 

He could not forbear a look of surprise when Georges, in 
fact, mentioned the name of one of our most distinguished 
consuls-general, who was at Smyrna at the time. 

“I was present, as it fell out, at the execution of the Com- 
mandant of Smyrna, the padischah having ordered Chosrew 
to put him to death — one of the most curious things I ever 
saw, though I have seen many. I will tell you all about it 
by-and-by at breakfast. 

“ From Smyrna I went to Spain, on hearing there was a 
revolution there. I went straight to Mina, who took me for 
an aide-de-camp, and gave me the rank of colonel. So I 
fought for the Constitutional party, which is going to the dogs, 
for we shall walk into Spain one of these days.” 

“And you a French officer!” said the Comte de Serizy 
severely. “ You are trusting very rashly to the discretion of 
your hearers.” 

“There are no spies among them,” said Georges. 


270 


A STAR T IN LIFE . 


“ And does it not occur to you, Colonel Georges/* said the 
count, “ that at this very time a conspiracy is being inquired 
into by the Chamber of Peers, which makes the Government 
very strict in its dealings with soldiers who bear arms against 
France, or who aid in intrigues abroad tending to the over- 
throw of any legitimate sovereign?” 

At this ominous remark, the painter reddened up to his ears, 
and glanced at Mistigris, who was speechless. 

“ Well, and what then?” asked old Leger. 

“Why, if I by chance were a magistrate, would it not be 
my duty to call on the gendarmes of the Brigade at Pierrefitte 
to arrest Mina’s aide-de-camp,” said the count, “and to sum- 
mons all who are in this chaise as witnesses? ” 

This speech silenced Georges all the more effectually because 
the vehicle was just passing the Police Station, where the white 
flag was, to use a classical phrase, floating on the breeze. 

“You have too many orders to be guilty of such mean con- 
duct,” said Oscar. 

“We will play him a trick yet,” whispered Georges to 
Oscar. 

“Colonel,” said Leger, very much discomfited by the 
count’s outburst, and anxious to change the subject, “ in the 
countries where you have traveled, what is the farming like? 
What are their crops in rotation ? ” 

“In the first place, my good friend, you must understand 
that the people are too busy smoking weeds to burn them on 
the land ” 

The count could not help smiling, and his smile reassured 
the narrator. 

“And they have a way of cultivating the land which you 
will think strange. They do not cultivate it at all ; that is 
their system. The Turks and Greeks eat onions or rice ; they 
collect opium from their poppies, which yields a large revenue, 
and tobacco grows almost wild — their famous Latakia. Then 
there are dates, bunches of sugar-plums, that grow without any 


A START IN LIFE. 


271 


trouble. It is a country of endless resources and trade. 
Quantities of carpets are made at Smyrna, and not dear." 

“Ay," said the farmer, “ but if the carpets are made of 
wool, wool comes from sheep ; and to have sheep, they must 
have fields, farms, and farming " 

“ There must, no doubt, be something of the kind," replied 
Georges. “But rice, in the first place, grows in water; and 
then I have always been near the coast, and have only seen 
the country devastated by war. Beside, I have a perfect 
horror of statistics." 

“And the taxes? " said the farmer. 

“Ah ! the taxes are heavy. The people are robbed of every- 
thing, and allowed to keep the rest. The Pasha of Egypt, 
struck by the merits of this system, was organizing the admin' 
istration on that basis when I left." 

“ But how? " said old Leger, who was utterly puzzled. 

“How?" echoed Georges. “There are collectors who 
seize the crops, leaving the peasants just enough to live on. 
And by that system there is no trouble with papers and red 
tape, the plague of France. There you are ! " 

“ But what right have they to do it ? " asked the farmer. 

“It is the land of despotism, that’s all. Did you never 
hear Montesquieu’s fine definition of Despotism — ‘ Like the 
savage, it cuts the tree down to gather the fruit.’ " 

“And that is what they want to bring us to ! " cried Mis- 
tigris. “ But a burnt rat dreads the mire." 

“And it is what we shall come to," exclaimed the Comte 
de Serizy. “Those who hold land will be wise to sell it. 
Monsieur Schinner must have seen how such things are done 
in Italy." 

“ Corpo di Baccol The pope is not behind his times. But 
they are used to it there. The Italians are such good people 1 
So long as they are allowed to do a little highway murdering 
of travelers, they are quite content." 

“But you, too, do not wear the ribbon of the Legion of 


272 


A START IN LIFE. 


Honor that was given you in 1819,” remarked the count. 
“ Is the fashion universal ? ” 

Mistigris and the false Schinner reddened up to their very 
hair. 

“Oh, with me it is different,” replied Schinner. “I do 
not wish to be recognized. Do not betray me, monsieur. I 
mean to pass for a quite unimportant painter; in fact, a mere 
decorator. I am going to a gentleman’s house where I am 
anxious to excite no suspicion.” 

“ Oh, ho ! ” said the count, “ a lady ! a love affair ! How 
happy you are to be young ! ” 

Oscar, who was bursting in his skin with envy at being 
nobody and having nothing to say, looked from Colonel 
Czerni-Georges to Schinner the great artist, wondering whether 
he could not make something of himself. But what could 
he be, a boy of nineteen, packed off to spend a fortnight or 
three weeks in the country with the steward of Presles? The 
Alicante had gone to his head, and his conceit was making 
the blood boil in his veins. Thus, when the sham Schinner 
seemed to hint at some romantic adventure of which the joys 
must be equal to the danger, he gazed at him with eyes 
flashing with rage and envy. 

“Ah ! ” said the count, with a look half of envy and half 
of incredulity, “ you must love a woman very much to make 
such sacrifices for her sake.” 

“What sacrifices?” asked Mistigris. 

“Don’t you know, my little friend, that a ceiling painted 
by so great a master is covered with gold in payment?” 
replied the count. “Why, if the Civil List pays you thirty 
thousand francs for those of the two rooms in the Louvre,” 
he went on, turning to Schinner, “ you would certainly 
charge a humble individual, a bourgeois, as you call us in your 
studios, twenty thousand for a ceiling, while an unknown 
decorator would hardly get two thousand francs.” 

“The money loss is not the worst of it,” replied Mistigris. 


A START IN LIFE, 


273 


“ You must consider that it will be a masterpiece, and that 
he must not sign it for .fear of compromising her.” 

“Ah ! I would gladly restore all my orders to the sovereigns 
of Europe to be loved as a young man must be, to be moved 
to such devotion ! ” cried Monsieur de Serizy. 

“Ay, there you are,” said Mistigris. “A man who is 
young is beloved of many women ) and as the saying goes, 
there is safety in grumblers.” 

“And what does Madame Schinner say to it?” asked the 
count, “for you married for love the charming Adelaide de 
Rouville,* the niece of old Admiral Kergarouet, who got 
you the work at the Louvre, I believe, through the interest 
of his nephew the Comte de Fontaine.” 

“ Is a painter ever a married man when he is traveling ? ” 
asked Mistigris. 

“That, then, is Studio morality?” exclaimed the count in 
an idiomatic way. 

“Is the morality of the courts where you got your orders 
any better? ” said Schinner, who had recovered his presence 
of mind, which had deserted him for a moment when he 
heard that the count was so well informed as to the commission 
given to the real Schinner. 

“I never asked for one,” replied the count. “I flatter 
myself that they were all honestly earned.” 

“And it becomes you like a pig in dress-boots,” said 
Mistigris. 

Monsieur de Serizy would not betray himself ; he put on 
an air of stupid good-nature as he looked out over the valley 
of Groslay, into which they diverged where the roads fork, 
taking the road to Saint-Brice, and leaving that to Chantilly 
on their right. 

“Ay, take that ! ” said Oscar between his teeth. 

“ And is Rome as fine as it is said to be ? ” Georges asked 
of the painter. 


18 


See “ The Purse.” 


274 


A START IN LIFE. 


“ Rome is fine only to those who love it ; you must have a 
passion for it to be happy there; but, as a town, I prefer 
Venice, though 1 was near being assassinated there.” 

“My word! But for me,” said Mistigris, “your goose 
would have been cooked ! It was that rascal Lord Byron who 
played you that trick. That devil of an Englishman was as 
mad as a hatter ! ” 

“ Hold your tongue,” said Schinner. “ I won’t have any- 
thing known of my affair with Lord Byron.” 

“ But you must confess,” said Mistigris, “ that you were 
very glad, indeed, that I had learned to ‘ box ’ in our French 
fashion ? ’ ’ 

Now and again Pierrotin and the count exchanged signifi- 
cant glances, which would have disturbed men a little more 
worldly-wise than these five fellow-travelers. 

“Lords and pashas, and ceilings worth thirty thousand 
francs! Bless me!” cried the lTsle-Adam carrier, “I have 
crowned heads on board to-day. What handsome tips I shall 
get!” 

“To say nothing of the places being paid for,” said Mis- 
tigris slily. 

“It comes in the nick of time,” Pierrotin went on. “For, 
you know, my fine new coach, Pere Leger, for which I paid 
two thousand francs on account — well, those swindling coach- 
builders, to whom I am to pay two thousand five hundred francs 
to-morrow, would not take fifteen hundred francs down and a 
bill for a thousand at two months. The vultures insist on it all 
in ready money. Fancy being as hard as that on a man who 
has traveled this road for eight years, the father of a family, 
and putting him in danger of losing everything, money and 
coach both, for lack of a wretched sum of a thousand francs ! 
Gee up, Bichette. They would not dare to do it to one of the 
big companies, I lay a wager.” 

“ Bless me ! No thong, no crupper ! ” said the student. 

“You have only eight hundred francs to seek,” replied the 


A START IN LIFE. 


275 


count, understanding that this speech, addressed to the farmer, 
was a sort of bill drawn on himself. 

“ That’s true,” said Pierrotin. “ Come up, Rougeot ; there, 
Bichette ! ” 

“ You must have seen some fine-painted ceilings at Venice,” 
said the count, speaking to Schinner. 

“ I was too desperately in love to pay any attention to what 
at the time seemed to me mere trifles,” replied Schinner. 
“And yet I might have been cured of love-affairs; for in the 
Venetian States themselves, in Dalmatia, I had just had a sharp 
lesson.” 

“Can you tell the tale?” asked Georges. “I know Dal- 
matia.” 

“Well, then, if you have been there, you know, of course, 
that up in that corner of the Adriatic they are all old pirates, 
outlaws, and corsairs retired from business, when they have 
escaped hanging, all ” 

“ Uscoques, in short,” said Georges. 

On hearing this, the right name, the count, whom Napoleon 
had sent into the province of Illyria, looked sharply round, so 
much was he astonished. 

“ It was in the town where the maraschino is made,” said 
Schinner, seeming to try to remember a name. 

“ Zara,” said Georges. “ Yes, I have been there ; it is on 
the coast.” 

“ You have hit it,” said the painter. “ I went there to see 
the country, for I have a passion for landscape. Twenty times 
have I made up my mind to try landscape painting, which no 
one understands, in my opinion, but Mistigris, who will one 
of these days be a Hobbema, Ruysdael, Claude Lorraine, 
Poussin, and all the tribe in one.” 

“Well,” exclaimed the count, “ if he is but one of them, 
he will do.” 

“ If you interrupt so often we shall never know where we 


276 


A START IN LIFE. 


“ Beside, our friend here is not speaking to you,” added 
Georges to the count. 

‘‘It is not good manners to interrupt,” said Mitigris sen- 
tentiously. “ However, we did the same ; and we should all be 
the losers if we didn’t diversify the conversation by an ex- 
change of reflections. All Frenchmen are equal in a public 
chaise, as the grandson of Czerni-Georges told us. So pray 
go on, delightful old man, more of your bunkum. It is quite 
the correct thing in the best society ; and you know the saying, 
Do in Turkey as the Turkeys do.” 

“I had heard wonders of Dalmatia,” Schinner went on. 
“So off I went, leaving Mistigris at the inn at Venice.” 

“ At the locanda ,” said Mistigris; “ put in the local color.” 

“Zara is, as I have been told, a vile hole ” 

“Yes,” said Georges; “but it is fortified.” 

“I should say so!” replied Schinner, “and the fortifica- 
tions are an important feature in my story. At Zara there 
are a great many apothecaries, and I lodged with one of them. 
In foreign countries the principal business of every native is 
to let lodgings, his trade is purely accessory. 

“ In the evening, when I had changed my shirt, I went out 
on my balcony. Now on the opposite balcony I perceived a 
woman — oh ! But a woman ! A Greek ; that says everything, 
the loveliest creature in all the town. Almond eyes, eyelids 
that came down over them like blinds, and lashes like paint- 
brushes; an oval face that might have turned Raphael’s brain, 
a complexion of exquisite hue, melting tones, a skin of velvet 
—hands — oh ! ” 

“ And not moulded in butter like those of David’s school,” 
said Mistigris. 

“You insist on talking like a painter ! ” cried Georges. 

“ There, you see ! drive nature out with a pitchfork and it 
comes back in a paint-box,” replied Mistigris. 

“And her costume — a genuine Greek costume,” Schinner 
went on. “As you may suppose, I was in flames. I ques« 


A START IN LIFE . 


277 


tioned my Diafoirus, and he informed me that my fair neigh- 
bor’s name was Zena. I changed my shirt. To marry Zena, 
her husband, an old villain, had paid her parents three hun- 
dred thousand francs, the girl’s beauty was so famous; and 
she really was the loveliest creature in all Dalmatia, Illyria, 
and the Adriatic. In that part of the world you buy your 
wife and without having seen her ” 

“I will not go there,” said old Leger. 

“My sleep, some nights, is illuminated by Zena’s eyes,” 
said Schinner. “ Her adoring young husband was sixty-seven. 
Good ! But he was as jealous — not as a tiger, for they say a 
tiger is as jealous as a Dalmatian, and my man was worse than 
a Dalmatian ; he was equal to three Dalmatians and a half. 
He was an Uscoque, a turkey-cock, a high cockalorum game- 
cock ! ” 

“ In short, the worthy hero of a cock-and-bull story,” said 
Mistigris. 

“ Good for you ! ” replied Georges, laughing. 

“After being a corsair, and perhaps a pirate, my man 
thought no more of spitting a Christian than I do of spitting 
out of window,” Schinner went on. “A pretty lookout for 
me. And rich — rolling in millions, the old villain ! And as 
ugly as a pirate may be, for some pasha had wanted his ears, 
and he had dropped an eye somewhere on his travels. But 
my Uscoque made good use of the one he had, and you may 
take my word for it when I tell you he had eyes all round his 
head. ‘Never does he let his wife out of his sight,’ said 
my little Diafoirus. ‘ If she should require your services, I 
would take your place in disguise,’ said I. ‘ It is a trick that 
is very successful in our stage-plays.* It would take too long 
to describe the most delightful period of my life, three days, 
to wit, that I spent at my window ogling Z6na, and putting 
on a clean shirt every morning. The situation was all the 
more ticklish and exciting because the least gesture bore some 
dangerous meaning. Finally, Zena, no doubt, came to the 


278 


A START IN LIFE. 


conclusion that in all the world none but a foreigner, a French* 
man, and an artist would be capable of making eyes at her in 
the midst of the perils that surrounded him ; so, as she exe- 
crated her hideous pirate, she responded to my gaze with 
glances that were enough to lift a man into the vault of par- 
adise without any need of pulleys. I was screwed up higher 
and higher ! I was tuned to the pitch of Don Quixote. At 
last I exclaimed : ‘ Well, the old wretch may kill me, but here 
goes!’ Not a landscape did I study; I was studying my 
corsair’s lair. At night, having put on my most highly scented 

clean shirt, I crossed the street and I went in ” 

“ Into the house ? ” cried Oscar. 

“ Into the house ? ” said Georges. 

“Into the house,” repeated Schinner. 

“ Well ! you are as bold as brass ! ” cried the farmer. “ I 

wouldn’t have gone, that’s all I can say ” 

“With all the more reason that you would have stuck in 
the door,” replied Schinner. “Well, I went in,” he con- 
tinued, “ and I felt two hands which took hold of mine. I 
said nothing; for those hands, as smooth as the skin of an 
onion, impressed silence on me. A whisper in my ear said 
in Venetian, 4 He is asleep.’ Then, being sure that no one 
would meet us, Zena and I went out on the ramparts for an 
airing, but escorted, if you please, by an old duenna as ugly 
as sin, who stuck to us like a shadow ; and I could not induce 
Madame la Pirate to dismiss this ridiculous attendant. 

“ Next evening we did the same ; I wanted to send the old 
woman home ; Zena refused. As my fair one spoke Greek, 
and I spoke Venetian, we could come to no understanding — 
we parted in anger ! Said I to myself, as I changed my shirt : 
‘ Next time surely there will be no old woman, and we can 
make friends again, each in our mother tongue.’ Well, and 
it was the old woman that saved me, as you shall hear. It 
was so fine that, to divert suspicion, I went out to look about 
me, after we had made it up, of course. After walking round 


A START IN LIFE . 


279 


the ramparts, I was coming quietly home with my hands in 
my pockets when I saw the street packed full of people. Such 
a crowd ! as if there was an execution. This crowd rushed 
at me. I was arrested, handcuffed, and led off in charge of 
the police. No, you cannot imagine, and I hope you may 
never know, what it is to be supposed to be a murderer by a 
frenzied mob, throwing stones at you, yelling after you from 
top to bottom of the high street of a country town, and pur- 
suing you with threats of death ! Every eye is a flame of 
fire, abuse is on every lip, these firebrands of loathing flare up 
above a hideous cry of ‘ Kill him ! down with the murderer ! ’ 
a sort of bass in the background.” 

“ So your Dalmatians yelled in French?” said the count. 
“ You describe the scene as if it had happened yesterday.” 

Schinner was for the moment dumfounded. 

“The mob speaks the same language everywhere,” said 
Mistigris the politician. 

“Finally,” Schinner went on again, “when I was in the 
local Court of Justice and in the presence of the judges of 
that country, I was informed that the diabolical corsair was 
dead, poisoned by Zena. How I wished I could put on a 
clean shirt ! 

“ On my soul, I knew nothing about this melodrama. It 
would seem that the fair Greek was wont to add a little opium 
— poppies are so plentiful there, as monsieur has told you — to 
her pirate’s grog to secure a few minutes’ liberty to take a 
walk, and the night before the poor woman had made a mis- 
take in the dose. It was the damned corsair’s money that 
made the trouble for my Zena ; but she accounted for every- 
thing so simply that I was released at once on the strength 
of the old woman’s affidavit, with an order from the mayor of 
the town and the Austrian commissioner of police to remove 
myself to Rome. Z6na, who allowed the heirs and the officers 
of the law to help themselves liberally to the Uscoque’s wealth, 
was let off, I was told, with two years’ seclusion in a convent, 


280 


A START IN LIFE. 


where she still is. I will go back and paint her portrait, for 
in a few years everything will be forgotten. And these are 
the follies of eighteen ! ” 

“Yes, and you left me without a sou in the locanda at 
Venice,” said Mistigris. “ I made my way from Venice to 
Rome, to see if I could find you, by daubing portraits at five 
francs a head, and never got paid ; but it was a jolly time! 
Happiness, they say, does not dwell under gilt hoofs.” 

“You may imagine the reflections that choked me with 
bile in a Dalmatian prison, thrown there without a protector, 
having to answer to the Dalmatian Austrians, and threatened 
with the loss of my head for having twice taken a walk with a 
woman who insisted on being followed by her housekeeper. 
That is what I call bad luck ! ” cried Schinner. 

“ What,” said Oscar guilelessly, “did that happen to you? ” 

“ Why not to this gentleman, since it had already happened 
during the French occupation of Illyria to one of our most 
distinguished artillery officers? ” said the count with meaning. 

“And did you believe the artillery man?” asked Mistigris 
slily. 

“And is that all?” asked Oscar. 

“Well,” said Mistigris, “he cannot tell you that he had 
his head cut off". Those who live last live longest.” 

“And are there any farms out there?” asked old Leger. 
“What do they grow there? ” 

“ There is the maraschino crop,” said Mistigris. “A plant 
that grows just as high as your lips and yields the liqueur of 
that name.” 

“Ah ! ” said Leger. 

“I was only three days in the town and a fortnight in 
prison,” replied Schinner. “I saw nothing, not even the 
fields where they grow the maraschino.” 

“They are making game of you,” said Georges to the 
farmer. “ Maraschino grows in cases.” 

“Romances alter cases,” remarked Mistigris. 


A START IN LIFE. 


281 


Pierrotin’s chaise was now on the way down one of the 
steep sides of the valley of Saint-Brice, toward the inn in the 
middle of that large village, where he was to wait an hour to 
let his horses take breath, eat their oats, and get a drink. It 
was now about half-past one. 

“ Halloo ! It is Farmer Leger ! ” cried the innkeeper, as the 
vehicle drew up at his door. “ Do you take breakfast ? ” 

“ Once every day,” replied the burly customer. “ We can 
eat a snack.” 

“Order breakfast for us,” said Georges, carrying his cane 
as if he were shouldering a musket, in a cavalier style that 
bewitched Oscar. 

Oscar felt a pang of frenzy when he saw this reckless ad- 
venturer take a fancy straw cigar-case out of his side-pocket, 
and from it a beautiful tan-colored cigar, which he smoked in 
the doorway while waiting for the meal. 

“ Do you smoke? ” said Georges to Oscar. 

“ Sometimes,” said the schoolboy, puffing out his little 
chest and assuming a dashing style. 

Georges held out the open cigar-case to Oscar and to Schin- 
ner. 

“ The devil ! ” said the great painter. “ Ten-sous cigars ! ” 

“The remains of what I brought from Spain,” said the ad- 
venturer. “Are you going to have breakfast? ” 

“No,” said the artist. “They will wait for me at the 
castle. Beside, I had some food before starting.” 

“And you ? ” said Georges to Oscar. 

“I have had breakfast,” said Oscar. 

Oscar would have given ten years of his life to have boots 
and trouser-straps. He stood sneezing, and choking, and 
spitting, and sucking up the smoke with ill-disguised grimaces. 

“ You don’t know how to smoke,” said Schinner. “ Look 
here,” and Schinner, without moving a muscle, drew in the 
smoke of his cigar and blew it out through his nose without 
the slightest effort. Then again he kept the smoke in his 

K 


282 


A START IN LIFE. 


throat, took the cigar out of his mouth, and exhaled it grace- 
fully. 

“ There, young man,” said the painter. 

‘‘And this, young man, is another way, watch this,” said 
Georges, imitating Schinner, but swallowing the smoke so 
that none returned. 

“And my parents fancy that I am educated,” thought poor 
Oscar, trying to smoke with a grace. But he felt so mortally 
sick that he allowed Mistigris to bone his cigar and to say, as 
he puffed at it with conspicuous satisfaction — 

“I suppose you have nothing catching.” 

But Oscar wished he were only strong enough to hit 
Mistigris. 

“Why,” said he, pointing to Colonel Georges, “eight 
francs for Alicante and cheese-cakes, forty sous in cigars, and 
his^breakfast, which will cost ” 

“ Ten francs at least,” said Mistigris. “But so it is, little 
dishes make long bills.” 

“Well, Pere Leger, we can crack a bottle of Bordeaux 
apiece?” said Georges to the farmer. 

“His breakfast will cost him twenty francs,” cried Oscar. 
“ Why, that comes to more than thirty francs ! ” 

Crushed by the sense of his inferiority, Oscar sat down on 
the curbstone lost in a reverie, which hindered his observ- 
ing that his trousers, hitched up as he sat, showed the line 
of union between an old stocking-leg and a new foot to it, a 
masterpiece of his mother’s skill. 

“Our understandings are twins, if not our soles,” said 
Mistigris, pulling one leg of his trousers a little way up to 
show a similiar effect. “ But a baker’s children are always 
worst bread.” 

The jest made Monsieur de Serizy smile as he stood with 
folded arms under the gateway behind the two lads. Heedless 
as they were, the solemn statesman envied them their faults; 
he liked their bounce, and admired the quickness of their fun. 


A START IN LIFE. 


283 


“ Well, can you get les Moulineaux? for you went to Paris 
to fetch the money,” said the innkeeper to old Leger, having 
just shown him a nag for sale in his stables. “ It will be a 
fine joke to screw a bit out of the Comte de Serizy, a peer of 
France and a State Minister.” 

The wily old courtier betrayed nothing in his face, but he 
looked round to watch the farmer. 

“ His goose is cooked ! ” replied Leger in a low voice. 

“So much the better; I love to see your bigwigs done. 
And if you want a score or so thousand francs, I will lend 
you the money. But Francois, the driver of Touchards’ six- 
o’clock coach, told me as he went through that Monsieur 
Margueron is invited to dine with the Comte de Serizy him- 
self to-day at Presles.” 

“ That is his excellency’s plan, but we have our little 
notions too,” replied the farmer. 

“ Ah, but the count will find a place for Monsieur Mar- 
gueron’s son, and you have no places to give away,” said the 
innkeeper. 

“No; but if the count has the Ministers on his side, I 
have King Louis XVIII. on mine,” said Leger in the inn- 
keeper’s ear, “ and forty thousand of his effigies handed over 
to Master Moreau will enable me to buy les Moulineaux for 
two hundred and sixty thousand francs before Monsieur de 
Serizy can step in, and he will be glad enough to take it off 
my hands for three hundred and sixty thousand rather than 
have the lands valued lot by lot.” 

“ Not a bad turn, master,” said his friend. 

“ How is that for a stroke of business? ” said the farmer. 

“And, after all, the farm lands are worth it to him,” said 
the innkeeper. 

“ Les Moulineaux pays six thousand francs a year in kind, 
and I mean to renew the lease at seven thousand five hundred 
for eighteen years. So as he invests at more than two and a 
half per cent., Monsieur le Comte won’t be robbed. 


284 


A START IN LIFE. 


“ Not to commit Monsieur Moreau, I am to be proposed 
to the count by him as a tenant ; he will seem to be taking 
care of his master’s interests by finding him nearly three per 
cent, for his money and a farmer who will pay regularly ” 

“ And what will Moreau get out of the job altogether ? ” 

“ Well, if the count makes him a present of ten thousand 
francs, he will clear fifty thousand on the transaction ; but he 
will have earned them fairly.” 

“And, after all, what does the count care for Presles? He 
is so rich,” said the innkeeper. “I have never set eyes on 
him myself.” 

“ Nor I neither,” said the farmer. “ But he is coming at 
last to live there ; he would not otherwise be laying out two 
hundred thousand francs on redecorating the rooms. It is as 
fine as the King’s palace.” 

“Well, then,” replied the other, “it is high time that 
Moreau should feather his nest.” 

“ Yes, yes ; for when once the master and mis’ess are on 
the spot, they will not keep their eyes in their pockets.” 

Though the conversation was carried on in a low tone, the 
count had kept his ears open. 

“ Here I have all the evidence I was going in search of,” 
thought he, looking at the burly farmer as he went back into 
the kitchen. “ But perhaps it is no more than a scheme as 

yet. Perhaps Moreau has not closed with the offer !” 

So averse was he to believe that the land steward was capable 
of mixing himself up in such a plot. 

Pierrotin now came out to give his horses water. The 
count supposed that the driver would breakfast with the inn- 
keeper and Leger, and what he had overheard made him fear 
the least betrayal. 

“ The whole posse are in league,” thought he ; “it serves 
them right to thwart their scheming. Pierrotin,” said he in 
a low voice as he went up to the driver, “ I promised you ten 
louis to keep my secret ; but if you will take care not to let 


A START IN LIFE. 


285 


out my name — and I shall know whether you have mentioned 
it, or given the least clue to it, to any living soul, even at 
TIsle-Adam — to-morrow morning, as you pass the castle, I 
will give you the thousand francs to pay for your new coach. 
And for greater safety,” added he, slapping Pierrotin’s back, 
u do without your breakfast ; stay outside with your horses.” 

Pierrotin had turned pale with joy. 

“ I understand, Monsieur le Comte, trust me. It is old 
Pere Leger ” 

“ It concerns every living soul,” replied the count. 

“ Be easy. Come, hurry up,” said Pierrotin, half opening 
the kitchen door, “ we are late already. Listen, Pere Leger, 
there is the hill before us, you know ; I am not hungry ; I 
will go on slowly, and you will easily catch me up. A walk 
will do you good.” 

“ The man is in a devil of a hurry ! ” said the innkeeper. 
“ Won’t you come and join us ? The colonel is standing 
wine at fifty sous, and a bottle of champagne.” 

“ No, I can’t. I have a fish on board to be delivered at 
Stors by three o’clock for a big dinner; and such customers 
don’t see a joke any more than the fish.” 

“ All right,” said Leger to the innkeeper ; “ put the horse 
you want me to buy in the shafts of your gig, and you can 
drive us on to pick up Pierrotin. Then we can breakfast in 
peace, and I shall see what the nag can do. Three of us can 
very well ride in your old jolter.” 

To the count’s great satisfaction, Pierrotin himself brought 
out his horses. Schinner and Mistigris had walked forward. 

Pierrotin picked up the two artists half-way between Saint- 
Brice and Poncelles ; and just as he reached the top of the hill, 
whence they had a view of Ecouen, the belfry of le Mesnil, 
and the woods which encircle that beautiful landscape, the 
sound of a galloping horse drawing a gig that rattled and 
jingled announced the pursuit of Pere Leger and Mina’s 
colonel, who settled themselves into the chaise again. 


286 


A START IN LIFE . 


As Pierrotin zigzagged down the hill into Moisselles, 
Georges, who had never ceased expatiating to old Leger on 
the beauty of the innkeeper’s wife at Saint-Brice, exclaimed — 

“ I say, this is not amiss by way of landscape, Great 
Painter? ” 

“ It ought not to astonish you, who have seen Spain and 
the East.” 

“And I have two of the Spanish cigars left. If nobody 
objects, will you help me finish them off, Schinner? The 
little man had enough with a mouthful or two.” 

Old Leger and the count kept silence, which was taken for 
consent. 

Oscar, annoyed at being spoken of as “a little man,” re- 
torted while the others were lighting their cigars — 

“Though I have not been Mina’s aide-de-camp, monsieur, 
and have not been in the East, I may go there yet. The 
career for which my parents intend me will, I hope, relieve 
me of the necessity of riding in a public chaise when I am as 
old as you are. When once I am a person of importance, and 
get a place, I will stay in it ” 

“And the rest, certainly!” said Mistigris, imitating the 
sort of hoarse crow which made Oscar’s speech even more 
ridiculous ; for the poor boy was at the age when the beard 
begins to grow and the voice to break. “After all,” added 
Mistigris, “ extremes bleat.” 

“ My word,” said Schinner, “ the horses can scarcely draw 
such a weight of dignity.” 

“So your parents intend to start you in a career,” said 
Georges very seriously. “And what may it be? ” 

“In diplomacy,” said Oscar. 

Three shouts of laughter went forth like three rockets from 
Mistigris, Schinner, and the old farmer. Even the count 
could not help smiling. Georges kept his countenance. 

“By Allah! But there is nothing to laugh at,” said the 
colonel. “ Only, young man,” he went on, addressing Oscar, 


A START IN LIFE . 


287 


“ it struck me that your respectable mother is not for the mo- 
ment in a social position wholly beseeming an ambassadress. 
She had a most venerable straw bag, and a patch on her 
shoe.” 

“ My mother, monsieur ! ” said Oscar, fuming with indigna- 
tion. “ It was our housekeeper.” 

“ 1 Our' is most aristocratic ! ” cried the count, interrupting 
Oscar. 

“ The king says our," replied Oscar haughtily. 

A look from Georges checked a general burst of laughter ; 
it conveyed to the painter and to Mistigris the desirability of 
dealing judiciously with Oscar, so as to make the most of this 
mine of amusement. 

“The gentleman is right,” said the painter to the count, 
designating Oscar. “Gentlefolk talk of our house; only 
second-rate people talk of my house. Everybody has a mania 
for seeming to have what he has not. For a man loaded with 
decorations ’ * 

“ Then, monsieur also is a decorator?” asked Mistigris. 

“ You know nothing of court language. I beg the favor of 
your protection, your excellency,” added Schinner, turning 
to Oscar. 

“I must congratulate myself,” said the count, “on having 
traveled with three men who are or will be famous — a painter 
who is already illustrious, a future general, and a young diplo- 
matist who will some day reunite Belgium to France.” 

But Oscar, having so basely denied his mother, and furious 
at perceiving that his companions were making game of him, 
determined to convince their incredulity at any cost. 

“All is not gold that glitters ! ” said he, flashing lightnings 
from his eyes. 

“You’ve got it wrong,” cried Mistigris. “All is not old 
that titters. You will not go far in diplomacy if you do not 
know your proverbs better than that.” 

“ If I do not know my proverbs, I know my way.” 


288 


A START IN LIFE. 


“It must be leading you a long way,” said Georges, “ for 
your family housekeeper gave you provisions enough for a sea 
voyage — biscuits, chocolate ” 

“A particular roll and some chocolate, yes, monsieur,” re- 
turned Oscar. “ My stomach is much too delicate to digest 
the cagmag you get at an inn.” 

“‘Cagmag’ is as delicate as your digestion,” retorted 
Georges. 

“ ‘ Cagmag ’ is good ! ” said the great painter. 

“The word is in use in the best circles,” said Mistigris; 
“ I use it myself at the coffee-house of the Poule Noire ” (black 
hen). 

“Your tutor was, no doubt, some famous professor — Mon- 
sieur Andrieux of the Academy or Monsieur Royer-Collard ? ” 
asked Schinner. 

“My tutor was the Abbe Loraux, now the Vicar of St. Sul- 
pice,” replied Oscar, remembering the name of the confessor 
of the school. 

“You did very wisely to have a private tutor,” said Misti- 
gris, “for the fountain — of learning — brought forth a mouse; 
and you will do something for your abbe, of course? ” 

“ Certainly; he will be a bishop some day.” 

“And through your family interest?” asked Georges quite 
gravely. 

“ We may perhaps contribute to his due promotion, for the 
Abbe Frayssinous often comes to our house.” 

“Oh, do you know the Abbe Frayssinous?” asked the 
count. 

“He is under obligations to my father,” replied the furious 
Oscar. 

“ And you are on your way to your estate, no doubt ?” said 
Georges. 

“ No, monsieur ; but I have no objection to saying where I 
am going. I am on my way to the mansion of Presles, the 
Comte de Serizy’s.” 


A START IN LIFE. 


289 


“ The devii you are! To Presles?” cried Schinner, turn- 
ing crimson. 

“Then do you know Monseigneur the Comte de Serizy?” 
asked Georges. 

Farmer Leger turned so as to look at Oscar with a be- 
wildered gaze, exclaiming — 

“And Monsieur le Comte is at Presles? n 

“ So it would seem, as I am going there,** replied Oscar. 

“Then you have often seen the count?” asked Monsieur 
de Serizy. 

“ As plainly as I see you. I am great friends with his son, 
who is about my age, nineteen ; and we ride together almost 
every day.” 

“ Kings have been known to harry beggar-maids,” said 
Mistigris sapiently. 

A wink from Pierrotin had relieved the farmer’s alarm. 

“ On my honor,” said the count to Oscar, “ I am delighted 
to find myself in the company of a young gentleman who can 
speak with authority of that nobleman. I am anxious to secure 
his favor in a somewhat important business in which his help 
will cost him nothing. It is a little claim against the American 
Government. I should be glad to learn something as to the 
sort of man he is.” 

“Oh, if you hope to succeed,** replied Oscar, with an as- 
sumption of competence, “do not apply to him, but to his 
wife ; he is madly in love with her, no one knows that better 
than I, and his wife cannot endure him.’* 

“Why?” asked Georges. 

“The count has some skin disease that makes him hideous, 
and Doctor Alibert has tried in vain to cure it. Monsieur de 
Serizy would give half of his immense fortune to have a chest 
like mine,” said Oscar, opening his shirt and showing a clean 
pink skin like a child’s. “He lives alone, secluded in his 
house. You need a good introduction to see him at all. In 
the first place, he gets up very early in the morning, and works 
19 


290 


A START IN LIFE . 


from three till eight, after eight he follows various treatments, 
sulphur baths or vapor baths. They stew him in a sort of 
iron tank, for he is always hoping to be cured.” 

“ If he is so intimate with the King, why is he not { touched * 
by him?” asked Georges. 

“Then the lady keeps her husband in hot water,” said 
Mistigris. 

“ The count has promised thirty thousand francs to a 
famous Scotch physician who is prescribing for him now,” 
Oscar went on. 

“Then his wife can hardly be blamed forgiving herself the 
best ” Schinner began, but he did not finish his sentence. 

“ To be sure,” said Oscar. “ The poor man is so shriveled, 
so decrepit, you would think he was eighty. He is as dry 
as parchment, and, to add to his misfortune, he feels his 
position ” 

“And feels it hot, I should think,” remarked the farmer 
facetiously. 

“ Monsieur, he worships his wife, and dares not blame 
her,” replied Oscar. “He performs the most ridiculous 
scenes with her, you would die of laughing — exactly like 
Arnolphe in Moli£re’s play.” 

The count, in blank dismay, looked at Pierrotin, who, see- 
ing him apparently unmoved, concluded that Madame Cla- 
part’s son was inventing a pack of slander. 

“So, monsieur, if you wish to succeed,” said Oscar to the 
count, “apply to the Marquis d’Aiglemont. If you have 
madame’s former adorer on your side, you will at one stroke 
secure both the lady and her husband.” 

“That is what we call killing two-thirds with one bone,” 
said Mistigris. 

“ Dear me ! ” said the painter, “ have you seen the count 
undressed? Are you his valet? ” 

“ His valet ! ” cried Oscar. 

“By the mass ! A man does not say such things about his 


A STAR 7' IN LIFE. 


291 


friends in a public conveyance,” added Mistigris. “ Discre- 
tion, my young friend, is the mother of inattention. I simply 
don’t hear you.” 

“It is certainly a case of tell me whom you know, and I 
will tell you whom you hate,” exclaimed Schinner. 

“But you must learn, Great Painter,” said Georges pom- 
pously, “ that no man can speak ill of those he does not 
know. The boy has proved at any rate that he knows his 
Serizy by heart. Now, if he had only talked of madame, it 
might have been supposed that he was on terms ” 

“ Not another word about the Comtesse de Serizy, young 
men!” cried the count. “Her brother, the Marquis de 
Ronquerolles, is a friend of mine, and the man who is so rash 
as to cast a doubt on the countess’ honor will answer to me 
for his speech.” 

“Monsieur is right,” said the artist, “there should be no 
scandal spoken about women.” 

“God, Honor , and the Ladies! I saw a melodrama of 
that name,” said Mistigris. 

“Though I do not know Mina, I know the keeper of the 
seals,” said the count, looking at Georges. “And though I 
do not display my orders,” he added, turning to the painter, 
“I can hinder their being given to those who do not deserve 
them. In short, I know so many people, that I know Mon- 
sieur Grindot, the architect of Presles. Stop at the next inn, 
Pierrotin ; I am going to get out.” 

Pierrotin drove on to the village of Moisselles, and there, 
at a little country inn, the travelers alighted. This bit of 
road was passed in utter silence. 

“Where on earth is that little rascal going?” asked the 
count, leading Pierrotin into the inn-yard. 

“To stay with your steward. He is the son of a poor 
lady who lives in the Rue de la Cerisaie, and to whom I 
often carry fruit and game and poultry — a certain Madame 
Husson.” 


292 


A START IN LIFE. 


“ Who is that gentleman?” old L6ger asked Pierrotin 
when the count had turned away. 

“ I don’t know,” said Pierrotin. “He never rode with 
me before ; but he may be the prince who owns the castle of 
Maffliers. He has just told me where to set him down on the 
road ; he is not going so far as l’lsle-Adam.” 

“Pierrotin fancies he is the owner of Maffliers,” said the 
farmer to Georges, getting back into the chaise. 

At this stage the three young fellows, looking as silly as 
pilferers caught in the act, did not dare meet each other’s eye, 
and seemed lost in reflections on the upshot of their several 
fictions. 

“ That is what I call a great lie and little wool,” observed 
Mistigris. 

“You see, I know the count,” said Oscar. 

“Possibly, but you will never be an ambassador,” replied 
Georges. “ If you must talk in a public carriage, learn to 
talk like me and tell nothing.” 

“ The mother of mischief is no more than a midge’s sting,” 
said Mistigris conclusively. 

The count now got into the chaise, and Pierrotin drove on ; 
perfect silence reigned. 

“ Well, my good friends,” said the count, as they reached 
the wood of Carreau, “ we are all as mute as if we were going 
to execution.” 

‘^Silence gives content. A man should know that silence 
is a bold ’un,” said Mistigris with an air. 

“ It is a fine day,” remarked Georges. 

“What place is that? ” asked Oscar, pointing to the castle 
of Franconville, which shows so finely on the slope of the 
great forest of Saint-Martin. 

“ What ! ” said the count, “ you who have been so often to 
Presles, do not know Franconville when you see it?” 

“ Monsieur knows more of men than of houses,” said Mis- 
tigris. 


A START IN LIFE. 


203 


“A sucking diplomatist may sometimes be oblivious,” ex- 
claimed Georges. 

‘‘Remember my name 1 ” cried Oscar in a fury, “it is 
Oscar Husson, and in ten years’ time I shall be famous.” 

After this speech, pronounced with great bravado, Oscar 
huddled himself into his corner. 

“ Husson de — what? ” asked Mistigris. 

“A great family,” replied the count. “ The Hussons de la 
Cerisaie. The gentleman was born at the foot of the Imperial 
throne.” 

Oscar blushed to the roots of his hair in an agony of alarm. 
They were about to descend the steep hill by la Cave, at the 
bottom of which, in a narrow valley, on the skirt of the forest 
of Saint-Martin, stands the splendid castle of Presles. 

“ Gentlemen,” said Monsieur de S6rizy, “I wish you well 
in your several careers. You, Monsieur le Colonel, make 
your peace with the King of France ; the Czerni-Georges 
must be on good terms with the Bourbons. I have no fore- 
cast for you, my dear Monsieur Schinner ; your fame is already 
made, and you have won it nobly by splendid work. But 
you are such a dangerous man that I, who have a wife, should 
not dare to offer you a commission under my roof. As to 
Monsieur Husson, he needs no interest ; he is the master of 
statesmen’s secrets, and can make them tremble. Monsieur 
Leger is going to steal a march on the Comte de Serizy ; I 
only hope that he may hold his own. Put me down here, 
Pierrotin, and you can take me up at the same spot to-mor- 
row ! ” added the count, who got out, leaving his fellow' 
travelers quite confounded. 

“When you take to your heels you can’t take too much,” 
remarked Mistigris, seeing how nimbly the traveler vanished 
in a sunken path. 

“ Oh, he must be the count who has taken Franconville ; he 
is going that way,” said Pere Leger. 

“ If ever again I try to humbug in a public carriage I will 


294 


A START IN LIFE . 


call myself out,” said the false Schinner. “It is partly your 
fault too, Mistigris,” said he, giving his boy a rap on hi? cap. 

“Oh, ho ! I — who only followed you to Venice,” replied 
Mistigris. “ But play a dog a bad game and slang him.” 

“Do you know,” said Georges to Oscar, “that if by any 
chance that was the Comte de Serizy, I should be sorry to 
find myself in your skin, although it is so free from disease.” 

Oscar, reminded by these words of his mother’s advice, 
turned pale, and was quite sobered. 

“Here you are, gentlemen,” said Pierrotin, pulling up at 
a handsome gate. 

“Are where?” exclaimed the painter, Georges, and Oscar 
all in a breath. 

“That’s a stiff one ! ” cried Pierrotin. “ Do you mean to 
say, gentlemen, that neither of you has ever been here before? 
There stands the castle of Presles ! ” 

“All right,” said Georges, recovering himself. “I am 
going on to the farm of les Moulineaux,” he added, not choos- 
ing to tell his fellow-travelers that he was bound for the 
house. 

“Then you are coming with me,” said L6ger. 

“ How is that ? ” 

“ I am the farmer at les Moulineaux. And what do you 
want of me, colonel ? ” 

“A taste of your butter,” said Georges, pulling out his 
portfolio. 

“Pierrotin, drop my things at the steward’s,” said Oscar; 
“I am going straight to the house.” And he plunged into a 
cross-path without knowing whither it led. 

“Halloo! Mr. Ambassador,” cried Pierrotin, “you are 
going into the forest. If you want to get to the castle, go in 
by the side-gate.” 

Thus compelled to go in, Oscar made his way into the 
spacious courtyard with a huge stone-edged flower-bed in the 
middle, and stone posts all round with chains between. While 


A START IN LIFE. 


295 


Pere Leger stood watching Oscar, Georges, thunderstruck at 
hearing the burly farmer describe himself as the owner of les 
Moulineaux, vanished so nimbly that, when the fat man 
looked round for his colonel, he could not find him. 

At Pierrotin’s request the gate was opened, and he went in 
with much dignity to deposit the Great Schinner’s multi- 
farious properties at the lodge. Oscar was in dismay at 
seeing Mistigris and the artist, the witnesses of his brag, really 
admitted to the castle. 

In ten minutes Pierrotin had unloaded the chaise of the 
painter’s paraphernalia, Oscar Husson’s luggage, and the neat 
leather portmanteau, which he mysteriously confided to the 
lodge-keeper. Then he turned his machine, cracking his whip 
energetically, and went on his way to the woods of l’lsle 
Adam, his face still wearing the artful expression of a peasant 
summing up his profits. 

Nothing was wanting to his satisfaction. On the morrow 
he would have his thousand francs. 

Oscar, with his tail between his legs, so to speak, wandered 
round the great court, waiting to see what would become of 
his traveling companions, when he presently saw Monsieur 
Moreau come out of the large entrance-hall known as the 
guardroom, on to the front steps. The land steward, who 
wore a long, blue riding-coat cut down to his heels, had on 
nankin-colored breeches and hunting-boots, and carried a crop 
in his hand. 

“Well, my boy, so here you are? And how is the dear 
mother? 1 ’ said he, shaking hands with Oscar. “Good- 
morning, gentlemen ; you, no doubt, are the painters prom- 
ised us by Monsieur Grindot, the architect?” said he to 
the artists. 

He whistled twice, using the end of his riding-whip, and 
the lodge-keeper came forward. 

“Take these gentlemen to their rooms — Nos. 14 and 15 ; 
Madame Moreau will give you the keys. Light fires this 


A START IN LIFE. 


296 

evening, if necessary, and carry up their things. I am in- 
structed by Monsieur le Comte to ask you to dine with me,’* 
he added, addressing the artists. “At five, as in Paris. If 
you are sportsmen, you can be well amused. I have permis- 
sion to shoot and fish, and we have twelve thousand acres of 
shooting outside our own grounds.’ * 

Oscar, the painter, and Mistigris, one as much disconcerted 
as the other, exchanged glances. Still, Mistigris, faithful to 
his instincts, exclaimed — 

“Pooh, never throw the candle after the shade!* On 
we go ! ” 

Little Husson followed the steward, who led the way, walk- 
ing quickly across the park. 

“Jacques,” said he to one of his sons, “go and tell your 
mother that young Husson has arrived, and say that I am 
obliged to go over to les Moulineaux for a few minutes.” 

Moreau, now about fifty years of age, a dark man of medium 
height, had a stern expression. His bilious complexion, 
highly colored nevertheless by a country life, suggested, at 
first sight, a character very unlike what his really was. Every- 
thing contributed to the illusion. His hair was turning gray, 
his blue eyes and a large aquiline nose gave him a sinister ex- 
pression, all the more so because his eyes were too close to- 
gether; still, his full lips, the shape of his face, and the good- 
humor of his address, would, to a keen observer, have been 
indications of kindliness. His very decided manner and 
abrupt way of speech impressed Oscar immensely with a sense 
of his penetration, arising from his real affection for the boy. 
Brought up by his mother to look up to the steward as a great 
man, Oscar always felt small in Moreau’s presence ; and now, 
finding himself at Presles, he felt an oppressive uneasiness, as 
if he had some ill to fear from this fatherly friend, who was his 
only protector. 

“ Why, my dear Oscar, you do not look glad to be here,” 
* In original : Vent, vidi cecidi. 


A START IN LIFE. 297 

said the steward. “ But you will have plenty to amuse you; 
you can learn to ride, to shoot, and hunt.” 

“I know nothing of such things,* ’ said Oscar dully. 

“ But I have asked you here on purpose to teach you.** 

“ Mamma told me not to stay more than a fortnight, because 
Madame Moreau ** 

“ Oh, well, we shall see,’* replied Moreau, almost offended 
by Oscar’s doubts of his conjugal influence. 

Moreau’s youngest son, a lad of fifteen, active and brisk, 
now came running up. 

“Here,” said his father, “ take your new companion to 
your mother.” 

And the steward himself went off by the shortest path to a 
keeper’s hut between the park and the wood. 

The handsome lodge, given by the count as his land stew- 
ard’s residence, had been built some years before the Revolu- 
tion, by the owner of the famous estate of Cassan or Bergeret, 
a farmer-general of enormous wealth, who made himself as 
notorious for extravagance as Bodard, Paris, and Bouret, laying 
out gardens, diverting rivers, building hermitages, Chinese 
temples, and other costly magnificence. 

This house, in the middle of a large garden, of which one 
wall divided it from the outbuildings of Presles, had formerly 
had its entrance on the village High Street. Monsieur de 
Serizy’s father, when he purchased the property, had only to 
pull down the dividing wall and build up the front gate to 
make this plot and house part of the outbuildings. Then, by 
pulling down another wall, he added to his park all the garden 
land that the former owner had purchased to complete his 
ring-fence. 

The lodge, built of freestone, was in the Louis XV. style, 
with linen-pattern panels under the windows, like those on 
the colonnades of the Place Louis XV., in stiff, angular folds; 
it consisted, on the first floor, of a fine drawing-room opening 
into a bedroom, and of a dining-room, with a billiard-room 


298 


A START IN LIFE. 


adjoining. These two suites, parallel to each other, were 
divided by a sort of anteroom or hall, and the stairs. The 
hall was decorated by the doors of the drawing-room and 
dining-room, both handsomely ornamental. The kitchen was 
under the dining-room, for there was a flight of ten outside 
steps. 

Madame Moreau had taken the second floor for her own, 
and had transformed what had been the best bedroom into a 
boudoir ; this boudoir, and the drawing-room below, hand- 
somely fitted up with the best pickings of the old furniture 
from the castle, would certainly have done no discredit to the 
mansion of a lady of fashion. The drawing-room, hung with 
blue-and-white damask, the spoils of a state bed, and with 
old gilded-wood furniture upholstered with the same silk, dis- 
played ample curtains to the doors and windows. Some pic- 
tures that had formerly been panels, with flower-stands, a few 
modern tables, and handsome lamps, beside an antique hang- 
ing chandelier of cut-glass, gave the room a very dignified 
effect. The carpet was old Persian. 

The boudoir was altogether modern and fitted to Madame 
Moreau’s taste, in imitation of a tent, with blue silk ropes on 
a light gray ground. There was the usual divan with pillows 
and cushions for the feet, and the flower-stands, carefully 
cherished by the head-gardener, were a joy to the eye with 
their pyramids of flowers. 

The dining-room and billiard-room were fitted with ma- 
hogany. All round the house the steward’s lady had planned 
a flower-garden, beautifully kept, and beyond it lay the park. 
Clumps of foreign shrubs shut out the stables, and to give 
admission from the road to her visitors she had opened a gate 
where the old entrance had been built up. 

Thus, the dependent position filled by the Moreaus was 
cleverly glossed over ; and they were the better able to figure 
as rich folk managing a friend’s estate for their pleasure, be- 
cause neither the count nor the countess ever came to quash 


A START IN' LIFE. 


299 


their pretensions; and the liberality of Monsieur de Serizy’s 
concessions allowed of their living in abundance, the luxury 
of country homes. Dairy produce, eggs, poultry, game, fruit, 
forage, flowers, wood, and vegetables — the steward and his 
wife had all of these in profusion, and bought literally nothing 
but butcher’s meat and the wine and foreign produce neces- 
sary to their lordly extravagance. The poultry-wife made 
the bread ; and, in fact, for the last few years, Moreau had 
paid his butcher’s bill with the pigs of the farm, keeping only 
as much pork as he needed. 

One day the countess, always very generous to her former 
lady’s-maid, made Madame Moreau a present, as a souvenir 
perhaps, of a little traveling chaise of a past fashion, which 
Moreau had furbished up, and in which his wife drove out 
behind a pair of good horses, useful at other times in the 
grounds. Beside this pair, the steward had his saddle-horse. 
He ploughed part of the park-land, and raised grain enough 
to feed the beasts and servants ; he cut three hundred tons 
more or less of good hay, accounting for no more than one 
hundred, encroaching on the license vaguely granted by the 
count ; and instead of using his share of the produce on the 
premises, he sold it. He kept his poultry-farm, his pigeons, 
and his cows on the crops from the park-land ; but then the 
manure from his stables was used in the count’s garden. 
Each of these pilfering acts had an excuse ready. 

Madame Moreau’s house-servant was the daughter of one of 
the gardeners, and waited on her and cooked ; she was helped 
in the housework by a girl, who also attended to the poultry 
and dairy. Moreau had engaged an invalided soldier named 
Brochon to look after the horses and do the dirty work. 

At Nerville, at Chauvry, at Beaumont, at Maffliers, at Pre- 
roles, at Nointel, the steward’s pretty wife was everywhere 
received by persons who did not, or affected not to, know her 
original position in life. And Moreau could confer obliga- 
tions. He could use his master’s interest in matters which are 


300 


A START IN LIFE . 


of immense importance in the depths of the country though 
trivial in Paris. After securing for friends the appointments 
of justice of the peace at Beaumont and at ITsle-Adam, he 
had, in the course of the game year, saved an inspector of 
forest-lands from dismissal, and obtained the cross of the 
Legion of Honor for the quartermaster at Beaumont. So 
there was never a festivity among the more respectable neigh- 
bors without Monsieur and Madame Moreau being invited. 
The cur6 and the Mayor of Presles were to be seen every 
evening at their house. A man can hardly help being a good 
fellow when he has made himself so comfortable. 

So Madame la Regisseuse — a pretty woman, and full of airs, 
like every grand lady’s servant who, when she marries, apes 
her mistress — introduced the latest fashions, wore the most 
expensive shoes, and never walked out but in fine weather. 
Though her husband gave her no more than five hundred 
francs a year for dress, this in the country is a very large sum, 
especially when judiciously spent; and his “lady,” fair, 
bright, and fresh-looking, at the age of thirty-six, and remain- 
ing slight, neat, and attractive in spite of her three children, 
still played the girl, and gave herself the airs of a princess. 
If, as she drove past in her open chaise on her way to Beau- 
mont, some stranger happened to inquire, “Who is that?” 
Madame Moreau was furious if a native of the place replied, 
“She is the steward’s wife at Presles.” She aimed at being 
taken for the mistress of the mansion. 

She amused herself with patronizing the villagers, as a great 
lady might have done. Her husband’s power with the count, 
proved in so many ways, hindered the townsfolk from laugh- 
ing at Madame Moreau, who was a person of importance in 
the eyes of the peasantry. 

Estelle, however — her name was Estelle — did not interfere 
in the management, any more than a stockbroker’s wife inter- 
feres in dealings on the Bourse ; she even relied on her hus- 
band for the administration of the house and of their income. 


A START IN LIFE . 


301 


Quite confident in her own powers of pleasing, she was miles 
away from imagining that this delightful life, which had gone 
on for seventeen years, could ever be in danger ; however, on 
hearing that the count had resolved on restoring the splendid 
castle of Presles, she understood that all her enjoyments were 
imperiled, and she had persuaded her husband to come to 
terms with Leger, so as to have a retreat at l’lsle-Adam. She 
could not have borne to find herself in an almost servile posi- 
tion in the presence of her former mistress, who would un- 
doubtedly laugh at her on finding her established at the lodge 
in a style that aped the lady of fashion. 

The origin of the deep-seated enmity between the Reyberts 
and the Moreaus lay in a stab inflicted on Madame Moreau 
by Madame de Reybert in revenge for a pin-prick that the 
steward’s wife had dared to give on the first arrival of the 
Reyberts, lest her supremacy should be infringed on by the 
lady nee de Corroy. Madame de Reybert had mentioned, 
and perhaps for the first time informed the neighborhood, of 
Madame Moreau’s original calling. The words lady's-maid 
flew from lip to lip. All those who envied the Moreaus — and 
they must have been many — at Beaumont, at l’lsle-Adam, at 
Maffiiers, at Champagne, at Nerville, at Chauvry, at Baillet, 
at Moisselles, made such pregnant comments that more than 
one spark from this conflagration fell into the Moreaus’ home. 
For four years, now, the Reyberts, excommunicated by their 
pretty rival, had become the object of so much hostile ani- 
madversion from her partisans that their position would have 
been untenable but for the thought of vengeance which had 
sustained them to this day. 

The Moreaus, who were very good friends with Grindot the 
architect, had been told by him of the arrival ere long of a 
painter commissioned to finish the decorative panels at the 
castle, Schinner having executed the more important pieces. 
This great painter recommended the artist we have seen 


302 


A START IN LIFE . 


traveling with Mistigris, to paint the borders, arabesques, and 
other accessory decorations. Hence, for two days past, 
Madame Moreau had been preparing her war-paint and sitting 
expectant. An artist who was to board with her for some 
weeks was worthy of some outlay. Schinner and his wife had 
been quartered in the castle, where, by the count’s orders, 
they had been entertained like my lord himself. Grindot, 
who boarded with the Moreaus, had treated the great artist 
with so much respect that neither the steward nor his wife 
had ventured on any familiarity. And, indeed, the richest 
and most noble landowners in the district had vied with each 
other in entertaining Schinner and his wife. So now Madame 
Moreau, much pleased at the prospect of turning the tables, 
promised herself that she would sound the trumpet before the 
artist who was to be her guest, and make him out a match in 
talent for Schinner. 

Although on the two previous days she had achieved very 
coquettish toilets, the steward’s pretty wife had husbanded 
her resources too well not to have reserved the most bewitch- 
ing till the Saturday, never doubting that on that day at any 
rate the artist would arrive to dinner. She had shod herself 
in bronze kid with fine thread stockings. A dress of finely 
striped pink-and-white muslin, a pink belt with a chased gold 
buckle, a cross and heart round her neck, and wristlets of 
black velvet on her bare arms — Madame de Serizy had fine 
arms, and was fond of displaying them — gave Madame 
Moreau the style of a fashionable Parisian. She put on a 
very handsome Leghorn hat, graced with a bunch of moss 
roses made by Nattier, and under its broad shade her fair 
hair flowed in glossy curls. 

Having ordered a first-rate dinner and carefully inspected 
the rooms, she went out at an hour which brought her to the 
large flower-bed in the court of the castle, like the lady of the 
house, just when the coach would pass. Over her head she 
held a very elegant pink silk parasol lined with white and 


A START IN LIFE. 


trimmed with fringe. On seeing Pierrotin hand over to the 
lodge-keeper the artist’s extraordinary-looking baggage, and 
perceiving no owner, Estelle had returned home lament- 
ing the waste of another carefully arranged toilet. And, 
like most people who have dressed for an occasion, she felt 
quite incapable of any occupation but that of doing nothing 
in her drawing-room while waiting for the passing of the 
Beaumont coach which should come through an hour after 
Pierrotin’s, though it did not start from Paris till one o’clock ; 
thus she was waiting at home while the two young artists were 
dressing for dinner. In fact, the young painter and Mistigris 
were so overcome by the description of lovely Madame Moreau 
given them by the gardener whom they had questioned, that 
it was obvious to them both that they must get themselves into 
their best “ toggery.” So they donned their very best before 
presenting themselves at the steward’s house, whither they were 
conducted by Jacques Moreau, the eldest of the children, a 
stalwart youth, dressed in the English fashion, in a round 
jacket with a turned-down collar, and as happy during the 
holidays as a fish in water, here on the estate where his mother 
reigned supreme. 

“Mamma,” said he, “here are the two artists come from 
Monsieur Schinner.” 

Madame Moreau, very agreeably surprised, rose, bid her 
son set chairs, and displayed all her graces. 

“ Mamma, little Husson is with father ; shall I fetch him ? ” 
whispered the boy in her ear. 

“There is no hurry, you can stop and amuse him,” said 
the mother. 

The mere words “there is no hurry” showed the two 
artists how entirely unimportant was their traveling com- 
panion, but the tone also betrayed the indifference of a step- 
mother for her stepchild. In fact, Madame Moreau, who, 
after seventeen years of married life, could not fail to be aware 
of her husband’s attachment to Madame Clapart and young 


304 


A START IN LIFE . 


Husson, hated the mother and son in so overt a manner that 
it is easy to understand why Moreau had never till now ven- 
tured to invite Oscar to Presles. 

“ We are requested, my husband and I,” said she to the two 
artists, “to do the honors of the castle. We are fond of art, 
and more especially of artists,” said she, with a simper, “and 
I beg you to consider yourselves quite at home here. In the 
country, you see, there is no ceremony; liberty is indispen- 
sable, otherwise life is too insipid. We have had Monsieur 
Schinner here already ” 

Mistigris gave his companion a mischievous wink. 

“ You know him, of course,” said Estelle, after a pause. 

“ Who does not know him, madame?” replied the painter. 

“ He is as well known as the parish birch,” added Mistigris. 

“Monsieur Grindot mentioned your name,” said Madame 
Moreau, “but really I ” 

“Joseph Bridau, madame,” replied the artist, extremely 
puzzled as to what this woman could be. 

Mistigris was beginning to fume inwardly at this fair lady’s 
patronizing tone ; still, he waited, as Bridau did too, for some 
movement, some chance word to enlighten them, one of those 
expressions of assumed fine-ladyism, which painters, those 
born and cruel observers of folly — the perennial food of their 
pencil — seize on in an instant. In the first place, Estelle’s 
large hands and feet, those of a peasant from the district of 
Saint-Lo, struck them at once ; and before long one or two 
lady’s-maid’s phrases, modes of speech that gave the lie to the 
elegance of her dress, betrayed their prey into the hands of 
the artist and his apprentice. They exchanged a look which 
pledged them both to take Estelle quite seriously as a pastime 
during their stay. 

“You are so fond of art, perhaps you cultivate it with suc- 
cess, madame?” said Joseph Bridau. 

“No. Though my education was not neglected, it was 
purely commercial. But I have such a marked and delicate 


A START IN LIFE. 


305 


feeling for art, that Monsieur Schinner always begged me, 
when he had finished a piece, to give him my opinion.” 

“Just as Moliere consulted La Foret,” said Mistigris. 

Not knowing that La Foret was a servant-girl, Madame 
Moreau responded with a graceful droop, showing that in her 
ignorance she regarded this speech as a compliment. 

“ How is it that he did not propose just to knock off your 
head ? ” said Bridau. “ Painters are generally on the lookout 
for handsome women.” 

“ What is your meaning, pray? ” said Madame Moreau, on 
whose face dawned the wrath of an offended queen. 

“ In studio slang, to knock a thing off is to sketch it,” said 
Mistigris, in an ingratiating tone, “ and all we ask is to have 
handsome heads to sketch. And we sometimes say in admi- 
ration that a woman’s beauty has knocked us over.” 

“Ah, I did not know the origin of the phrase ! ” replied 
she, with a look of languishing sweetness at Mistigris. 

“My pupil, Monsieur Leon de Lora,” said Bridau, “ has a 
great talent for likeness. He would be only too happy, fair 
being, to leave you a souvenir of his skill by painting your 
charming face.” 

And Bridau signaled to Mistigris, as much as to say, 
“ Come, drive it home, she really is not amiss ! ” 

Taking this hint, Leon de Lora moved to the sofa by 
Estelle’s side, and took her hand, which she left in his. 

“ Oh ! if only as a surprise to your htfsband, madame, you 
could give me a few sittings in secret, I would try to excel 
myself. You are so lovely, so young, so charming ! A man 
devoid of talent might become a genius with you for his 
model ! In your eyes he would find ” 

“And we would represent your sweet children in our ara- 
besques,” said Joseph, interrupting Mistigris. 

“ I would rather have them in my own drawing-room ; but 
that would be asking too much,” said she, looking coquet- 
tishly at Bridau. 

20 


306 


A START IN LIFE . 


“Beauty, madame, is a queen whom painters worship, and 
who has every right to command them.” 

“They are quite charming/’ thought Madame Moreau. 
“Do you like driving out in the evening, after dinner, in an 
open carriage, in the woods?” 

“ Oh ! oh ! oh ! oh ! ” cried Mistigris, in ecstatic tones at each 
added detail. “ Why, Presles, will be an earthly paradise.” 

“ With a fair-haired Eve, a young and bewitching woman,” 
added Bridau. 

Just as Madame Moreau was preening herself, and soaring 
into the seventh heaven, she was brought down again like a 
kite by a tug at the cord. 

“ Madame ! ” exclaimed the maid, bouncing in like a can- 
non ball. 

“ Bless me, Rosalie, what can justify you in coming in like 
this without being called ? ” 

Rosalie did not trouble her head about this apostrophe, but 
said in her mistress’ ear — 

“ Monsieur le Comte is here.” 

“ Did he ask for me? ” said the steward’s wife. 

“No, madame — but — he wants his portmanteau and the 
key of his room.” 

“ Let him have them then,” said she, with a cross shrug to 
disguise her uneasiness. 

“ Mamma, here is Oscar Husson ! ” cried her youngest son, 
bringing in Oscar, who, as red as a poppy, dared not come 
forward as he saw the two painters in different dress. 

“ So here you are at last, boy,” said Estelle coldly. “ You 
are going to dress, I hope?” she went on, after looking at 
him from head to foot with great contempt. “ I suppose your 
mother has not brought you up to dine in company in such 
clothes as those.” 

“Oh, no,” said the ruthless Mistigris, “a coming diplo- 
matist must surely have a seat — to his trousers ! A coat to 
dine saves wine.” 


A START IN LIFE. 


307 


“A coming diplomatist?” cried Madame Moreau. 

The tears rose to poor Oscar’s eyes as he looked from 
Joseph to Leon. 

“ Only a jest by the way,” replied Joseph, who wished to 
help Oscar in his straits. 

“The boy wanted to make fun as we did and he tried to 
humbug,” said the merciless Mistigris. “And now he finds 
himself the ass with a lion’s grin.” 

“ Madame,” said Rosalie, coming back to the drawing-room 
door, “his excellency has ordered dinner for eight persons at 
six o’clock ; what is to be done? ” 

While Estelle and her maid were holding counsel, the 
artists and Oscar gazed at each other, their eyes big with ter- 
rible apprehensions. 

“His excellency — Who?” said Joseph Bridau. 

“Why, Monsieur le Comte da Serizy,” replied little 
Moreau. 

“Was it he, by chance, in the coucou?” said L6on de 
Lora. 

“Oh!” exclaimed Oscar, “the Comte de Serizy would 
surely never travel but in a coach and four.” 

“ How did he come, madame — the Comte de Serizy?” the 
painter asked of Madame Moreau when she came back very 
much upset. 

“I have no idea,” said she. “I cannot account for his 
coming, nor guess what he has come for. And Moreau is 
out ! ’ ’ 

“ His excellency begs you will go over to the castle, Mon- 
sieur Schinner,” said the gardener, coming to the door, “and 
he begs you will give him the pleasure of your company at 
dinner, as well as Monsieur Mistigris.” 

“ Our goose is cooked ! ” said the lad with a laugh. “The 
man we took for a country worthy in Pierrotin’s chaise was 
the count. So true is it that what you seek you never bind,” 
he added. 


308 


A START IN LIFE. 


Oscar was almost turning to a pillar of salt; for, on hearing 
this, his throat felt as salt as the sea. 

“And you ! Who told him all about his wife’s adorers and 
his skin disease?” said Mistigris to Oscar. 

“What do you mean?” cried the steward’s wife, looking 
at the two artists, who went off laughing at Oscar’s face. 

Oscar stood speechless, thunderstruck ; hearing nothing, 
though Madame Moreau was questioning him and shaking 
him violently by one of his arms, which she had seized and 
clutched tightly ; but she was obliged to leave him where he 
was without having extracted a reply, for Rosalie called her 
again to give out linen and plate, and to request her to attend 
in person to the numerous orders given by the count. The 
house-servants, the gardeners, everybody on the place, were 
rushing to and fro in such confusion as may be imagined. 

The master had in fact dropped on the household like a 
shell from a mortar. From above la Cave the count had made 
his way by a path, familiar to him, to the gamekeeper’s hut, 
and reached it before Moreau. The gamekeeper was amazed 
to see his real master. 

“ Is Moreau here, I see his horse waiting ? ” asked Monsieur 
de Serizy. 

“No, monseigneur; but as he is going over to les Mou- 
lineaux before dinner, he left his horse here while he ran 
across to give some orders at the house.” 

The gamekeeper had no idea of the effect of this reply, 
which, under existing circumstances, was, in the eyes of a 
clear-sighted man, tantamount to assurance. 

“If you value your place,” said the count to the keeper, 
“ ride as fast as you can pelt to Beaumont on this horse, and 
deliver to Monsieur Margueron a note I will give you.” 

The count went into the man’s lodge, wrote a line, folded 
it in such a manner that it could not be opened without detec- 
tion, and gave it to the man as soon as he was in the saddle. 


A START IN LIFE. 


309 


‘‘ Not a word to any living soul,” said he. “And you, 
madame,” he added to the keeper’s wife, “ if Moreau is sur- 
prised at not finding his horse here, tell him merely that I 
took it.” 

And the count went off* across the park, through the gate 
which was opened for him at his nod. 

Inured though a man may be to the turmoil of political 
life, with its excitement and vicissitudes, the soul of a man 
who, at the count’s age, is still firm enough to love, is also 
young enough to feel a betrayal. It was so hard to believe 
that Moreau was deceiving him, that at Saint-Brice Monsieur 
de Serizy had supposed him to be not so much in league with 
Leger and the notary as, in fact, led away by them. And so, 
standing in the inn gateway, as he heard Pere Leger talking 
to the innkeeper, he intended to forgive his land steward after 
a severe reproof. 

And then, strange to say, the dishonesty of his trusted 
agent had seemed no more than an episode when Oscar had 
blurted out the noble infirmities of the intrepid traveler, the 
Minister of Napoleon. Secrets so strictly kept could only 
have been revealed by Moreau, who had no doubt spoken 
contemptuously of his benefactor to Madame de S£rizy’s 
former maid, or to the erstwhile Aspasia of the Directoire. 

As he made his way down the cross-road to the castle, the 
peer of France, the great minister, had shed bitter tears, 
weeping as a boy weeps. They were his last tears that he 
shed ! Every human feeling at once was so cruelly, so merci- 
lessly attacked, that this self-controlled man rushed on across 
his park like a hunted animal. 

When Moreau asked for his horse, and the keeper’s wife 
replied — 

“ Monsieur le Comte has just taken it.” 

“ Who — Monsieur le Comte ? ” cried he. 

“ Monsieur le Comte de Serizy, the master,” said she. 
“Perhaps he is at the castle,” added she, to get rid of the 


310 


A START IN LIFE. 


steward, who, quite bewildered by this occurrence, went off 
toward the house. 

But he presently returned to question the keeper’s wife, for 
it had struck him that there was some serious motive for his 
master’s secret arrival and unwonted conduct. The woman, 
terrified at finding herself in a vise, as it were, between the 
count and the steward, had shut herself into her lodge, quite 
determined only to open the door to her husband. Moreau, 
more and more uneasy, hurried across to the gatekeeper’s 
lodge, where he was told that the count was dressing. Rosa- 
lie, whom he met, announced: “Seven people to dine at the 
count’s table.” 

Moreau next went home, where he found the poultry-girl 
in hot discussion with an odd-looking young man. 

“Monsieur le Comte told us, ‘ Mina’s aide-de-camp and a 
colonel,’ ” the girl insisted. 

“I am not a colonel,” replied Georges. 

“ Well, but is your name Georges ? ” 

“ What is the matter?” asked the steward, intervening. 

“ Monsieur, my name is Georges Marest ; I am the son of 
a rich hardware dealer, wholesale, in the Rue Saint-Martin, 
and I have come on business to Monsieur le Comte de Serizy 
from Maitre Crottat, his notary — I am his second clerk.” 

“And I can only repeat, sir, what monsieur said to me — 
‘ A gentleman will come,’ says he, ‘ a Colonel Czerni-Georges, 
aide-de-camp to Mina, who traveled down in Pierrotin’s 
chaise. If he asks for me, show him at once into the drawing- 
room.’ ” 

“ There is no joking with his excellency,” said the steward. 
“You had better go in, monsieur. But how is it that his 
excellency came down without announcing his purpose ? And 
how does he know that you traveled by Pierrotin’s chaise?” 

“ It is perfectly clear,” said the clerk, “ that the count is 
the gentleman who, but for the civility of a young man, would 
have had to ride on the front seat of Pierrotin’s coucou.” 


A STAR T IN LIFE . 


311 


“ On the front seat of Pierrotin’s coucou? ” cried the stew- 
ard and the farm-girl. 

“I am quite sure of it from what this girl tells me,” said 
Georges Marest. 

“But how ?” the steward began. 

“Ah, there you are!” cried Georges. “To humbug the 
other travelers, I told them a heap of cock-and-bull stories 
about Egypt, Greece, and Spain. I had spurs on, and I gave 
myself out as a colonel in the cavalry — a mere joke.” 

“And what was the gentleman like, whom you believe to 
be the count?” asked Moreau. 

“Why, he has a face the color of brick,” said Georges, 
“with perfectly white hair and black eyebrows.” 

“ That is the man ! ” 

“lam done for ! ” said Georges Marest. 

“Why?” 

“ I made fun of his orders.” 

“Pooh, he is a thorough good fellow; you will have 
amused him. Come to the castle forthwith,” said Moreau. 
“I am going up to the count. Where did he leave you? ” 

“At the top of the hill.” 

“I can make neither head nor tail of it ! ” cried Moreau. 

“After all, I poked fun at him, but I did not insult him,” 
said the clerk to himself. 

“And what are you here for? ” asked the steward. 

“I have brought the deed of sale of the farm-lands of les 
Moulineaux, ready made out.” 

“Good heavens!” exclaimed Moreau. “I don’t under- 
stand.” 

Moreau felt his heart beat painfully when, after knocking 
two raps on his master’s door, he heard in reply — 

“ Is that you, Monsieur Moreau ? ” 

“Yes, monseigneur.” 

“ Come in.” 

The count was dressed in white trousers and thin boots, a 


312 


A START IN LIFE. 


white vest, and a black coat on which glittered, on the right* 
hand side, the star of the grand cross of the Legion of Honor, 
and on the left, from a buttonhole, hung that of the Golden 
Fleece from a gold chain ; the blue ribbon was conspicuous 
across his vest. He had dressed his hair himself, and had no 
doubt got himself up to do the honors of Presles to Margueron, 
and, perhaps, to impress that worthy with the atmosphere of 
grandeur. 

“Well, monsieur,” said the count, who remained sitting, 
but allowed Moreau to stand, “so we cannot come to terms 
with Margueron ? ” 

“At the present moment he wants entirely too much for 
his farm.” 

“But why should he not come over here to talk about it ? ” 
said the count in an absent-minded way. 

“He is ill, monseigneur ” 

“ Are you sure ? ” 

“ I went over there ” 

“Monsieur,” said the count, assuming a stern expression 
that was terrible, “what would you do to a man whom you 
had allowed to see you dress a wound you wished to keep 
secret, and who went off to make game of it with a street 
trollop? ” 

“ I should give him a sound thrashing.” 

“And if, in addition to this, you discovered that he was 
cheating your confidence and robbing you?” 

“ I should try to catch him out and send him to the hulks.” 

“ Listen, Monsieur MoreaiJ. You have, I suppose, dis- 
cussed my health with Madame Clapart and made fun at her 
house of my devotion to my wife, for little Husson was giving 
to the passengers in a public conveyance a vast deal of infor- 
mation with reference to my cures, in my presence, this very 
morning, and in what words ! God knows ! He dared to 
slander my wife. 

“ Again, I heard from Farmer Leger’s own lips, as he re- 


A START IN LIFE. 


313 


turned from Paris in Pierrotin’s chaise, of the plan concocted 
by the notary of Beaumont with him, and with you, with 
reference to les Moulineaux. If you have been at all to see 
Margueron, it was to instruct him to sham illness; he is so 
little ill that I expect him to dinner, and he is coming. Well, 
monsieur, as to your having made a fortune of two hundred 
and fifty thousand francs in seventeen years — I forgive you. 
I understand it. If you had but asked me for what you took 
from me, or what others offered you, I would have given it to 
you ; you have a family to provide for. Even with your want 
of delicacy you have treated me better than another might 
have done, that I believe 

“ But that you, who know all that I have done for my 
country, for France, you who have seen me sit up a hundred 
nights and more to work for the Emperor, or toiling eighteen 
hours a day for three months on end ; that you, who know my 
worship of Madame de Serizy, should have gossiped about it 
before a boy, have betrayed my secrets to the mockery of a 
Madame Husson ” 

“ Monseigneur ! ” 

“ It is unpardonable. To damage a man’s interest is 
nothing, but to strike at his heart ! Ah ! you do not know 
what you have done ! ” 

The count covered his face with his hands and was silent 
for a moment. 

“ I leave you in possession of what you have,” he went on, 
“and I will forget you. As a point of dignity, of honor, 
we will part without quarreling, for, at this moment, I can 
remember what your father did for mine. 

“ You must come to terms — good terms — with Monsieur de 
Reybert, your successor. Be calm, as I am. Do not make 
yourself a spectacle for fools. Above all, no bluster and no 
haggling. Though you have forfeited my confidence, try to 
preserve the decorum of wealth. As to the little wretch who 
has half killed me, he is not to sleep at Presles. Send him 

L 


314 


A START IN LIFE, 


to the inn ; I cannot answer for what I might do if he crossed 
my path.” 

“I do not deserve such leniency, monseigneur,” said 
Moreau, with tears in his eyes. “ If I had been utterly dis- 
honest I should have five hundred thousand francs; and 
indeed I will gladly account for every franc in detail. But 
permit me to assure you, monseigneur, that when I spoke of 
you to Madame Clapart it was never in derision. On the 
contrary, it was to deplore your condition and to ask her 
whether she did not know of some remedy, unfamiliar to the 
medical profession, which the common people use. I have 
spoken of you in the boy’s presence when he was asleep — but 
he heard me, it would seem ! — and always in terms of the 
deepest affection and respect. Unfortunately, a blunder is 
sometimes punished as a crime. Still, while I bow to the 
decisions of your just anger, I would have you to know what 
really happened. Yes, it was heart to heart that I spoke of 
you to Madame Clapart. And only ask my wife ; never have 
I mentioned these matters to her ” 

“ That will do,” said the count, whose conviction was com- 
plete. “ We are not children ; the past is irrevocable- 

Go and set your affairs and mine in order. You may remain 
in the lodge till the month of October. Monsieur and 
Madame de Reybert will live in the castle. Above all, try to 
live with them as gentlemen should — hating each other, but 
keeping up appearances.” 

The count and Moreau went downstairs, Moreau as white 
as the count’s hair, Monsieur de Serizy calm and dignified. 

While this scene was going forward, the Beaumont coach, 
leaving Paris at one o’clock, had stopped at the gate of 
Presles to set down Maitre Crottat, who, in obedience to the 
count’s orders, was shown into the drawing-room to wait for 
him ; there he found his clerk excessively crestfallen, in com- 
pany with the two painters, all three conspicuously uncom- 


A START IN LIFE. 


315 


fortable. Monsieur de Reybert, a man of fifty, with a very 
surly expression, had brought with him old Margueron and the 
notary from Beaumont, who held a bundle of leases and title- 
deeds. 

When this assembled party saw the count appear in full 
court costume, Georges Marest had a spasm in the stomach 
and Joseph Bridau felt a qualm ; but Mistigris, who was him- 
self in his Sunday clothes, and who indeed had no crime on 
his conscience, said loud enough to be heard — 

“ Well, he looks much nicer now.” 

“You little rascal, ” said the count, drawing him toward 
him by one ear, “ so we both deal in decorations ! Do you 
recognize your work, my dear Schinner? ” he went on, point- 
ing to the ceiling. 

“Monseigneur,” said the artist, “I was so foolish as to 
assume so famous a name out of bravado ; but to-day’s ex- 
perience makes it incumbent on me to do something good and 
win glory for that of Joseph Bridau.” 

“You took my part,” said the count eagerly, “and I hope 
you will do me the pleasure of dining with me — you and 
your witty Mistigris.” 

“You do not know to what you are exposing yourself,” 
said the audacious youngster; “an empty stomach knows no 
peers. ’ ’ 

“ Bridau,” said the count, struck by a sudden reminiscence, 
“are you related to one of the greatest workers under the 
Empire, a brigadier in command who died a victim to his 
zeal?” 

“I am his son, my lord,” said Joseph, bowing. 

“Then you are welcome here,” replied the count, taking 
the artist’s hand in both his own ; “ I knew your father, and 
you may depend on me as on — an American uncle,” said 
Monsieur de Serizy, smiling. “But you are too young to 
have a pupil — to whom does Mistigris belong? ” 

“ To my friend Schinner, who has lent him to me,” replied 


316 


A START IN LIFE. 


Joseph. “ Mistigris’ name is Leon de Lora. My lord, if you 
remember my father, will you condescend to bear in mind his 
other son, who stands accused of conspiring against the State, 
and is on his trial before the Supreme Court ” 

“To be sure,” said the count. “I will bear it in mind, 
believe me. As to Prince Czerni-Georges, Ali Pasha’s ally, 

and Mina’s aide-de-camp ” said the count, turning to 

Georges. 

“ He? — my second clerk ? ” cried Crottat. 

“You are under a mistake, Maitre Crottat,” said Monsieur 
de Serizy, very severely. “A clerk who hopes ever to be- 
come a notary does not leave important documents in a dili- 
gence at the mercy of his fellow-travelers ! A clerk who hopes 
to become a notary does not spend twenty francs between 
Paris and Moisselles ! A clerk who hopes to become a notary 
does not expose himself to arrest as a deserter ” 

“ Monseigneur,” said Georges Marest, “ I may have amused 
myself by playing a practical joke on a party of travelers, 
but 

“ Do not interrupt his excellency,” said his master, giving 
him a violent nudge in the ribs. 

“ A notary ought early to develop the gifts of discretion, 
prudence, and discernment, and not mistake a minister of 
State for a candlemaker.” 

“I accept sentence for my errors,” said Georges; “but I 
did not leave my papers at the mercy ” 

“You are at this moment committing the error of giving 
the lie to a minister of State, a peer of France, a gentleman, 
an old man — and a client. Look for your deed of sale.” 

The clerk turned over the papers in his portfolio. 

“Do not make a mess of your papers,” said the count, 
taking the document out of his pocket. “ Here is the deed 
you are seeking.” 

Crottat turned it over three times, so much was he amazed 
at receiving it from the hands of his noble client. 


A START IN LIFE. 


317 


“What, sir ! ” he at last began, addressing Georges. 

“If I had not taken it,” the count went on, “Pere Leger 
— who is not such a fool as you fancy him from his questions 
as to agriculture, since they might have taught you that a man 
should always be thinking of his business — Pere Leger might 
have gotten hold of it and discovered my plans. You also will 
give me the pleasure of your company at dinner, but on con- 
dition of telling us the history of the Moslem’s execution at 
Smyrna, and of finishing the memoirs of some client which 
you read, no doubt, before publication.” 

“A trouncing for bouncing ! ” said Leon de Lora, in a low 
voice to Joseph Bridau. 

“ Gentlemen,” said the count to the notary from Beaumont, 
to Crottat, Margueron, and Reybert, “ come into the other 
room. We will not sit down to dinner till we have concluded 
our bargain ; for, as my friend Mistigris says, we must know 
when to creep silent.” 

“ Well, he is a thoroughly good fellow,” said Leon de Lora 
to Georges Marest. 

“Yes; but if he is a good fellow, my governor is not, and 
he will request me to play my tricks elsewhere.” 

“Well, you like traveling,” said Bridau. 

“ What a dressing that boy will get from Monsieur and 
Madame Moreau ! ” cried Leon de Lora. 

“ The little idiot ! ” said Georges. “ But for him the count 
would have thought it all very good fun. Well, well, it 
is a useful lesson, and if I am caught chattering in a coach 
again ” 

“Oh, it is a stupid thing to do,” said Joseph Bridau. 

“And vulgar, too,” said Mistigris. “Keep your tongue 
to clean your teeth.” 

While the business of the farm was being discussed between 
Monsieur Margueron and the Comte de S6rizy, with the assist- 
ance of the three notaries, and in the presence of Mons. de 
Reybert, Moreau was slowly making his way home. He went 


318 


A START IN LIFE. 


in without looking about him, and sat down on a sofa in the 
drawing-room, while Oscar Husson crept into a corner out of 
sight, so terrified was he by the steward’s white face. 

“Well, my dear,” said Estelle, coming in, fairly tired out 
by all she had had to do, “ what is the matter ? ” 

“ My dear, we are ruined, lost beyond redemption. I am 
no longer land steward of Presles ! The count has withdrawn 
his confidence.” 

“And what has caused ” 

“ Old Leger, who was in Pierrotin’s chaise, let out all about 
the farm of les Moulineaux ; but it is not that which has cut me 
off for ever from his favor ” 

“ What then ? ” 

“ Oscar spoke ill of the countess, and talked of monseig- 
neur’s ailments ” 

“Oscar?” cried Madame Moreau. “You are punished 
by your own act ! A pretty viper you have nursed in your 
bosom. How often have I told you ” 

“That will do,” said Moreau hoarsely. 

At this instant Estelle and her husband detected Oscar 
huddled in a corner. Moreau pounced on the luckless boy 
like a kite on its prey, seized him by the collar of his olive- 
green coat, and forcibly dragged him into the daylight of a 
window. 

“ Speak ! What did you say to monseigneur in the coach? 
What devil loosened your tongue, when you always stand 
moonstruck if I ask you a question? What did you do it 
for?” said the steward with terrific violence. 

Oscar, too much scared for tears, kept silence, as motionless 
as a statue. 

“ Come and ask his excellency’s pardon ! ” said Moreau. 

“As if his excellency cared about a vermin like him ! ” 
shrieked Estelle in a fury. 

“ Come — come to the castle ! ” Moreau repeated. 

Oscar collapsed, a lifeless heap on the floor. 


A START IN LIFE. 


319 


“ Will you come, I say ? ” said Moreau, his rage increasing 
every moment. 

“ No, no; have pity ! ” cried Oscar, who could not face a 
punishment worse than death. 

Moreau took the boy by the collar and dragged him like a 
corpse across the courtyard, which rang with the boy’s cries 
and sobs ; he hauled him up the steps and flung him, howling 
and as rigid as a post, into the drawing-room at the feet of the 
count, who, having settled for the purchase of les Moulineaux, 
was just passing into the dining-room with his friends. 

“ On your knees, on your knees, wretched boy. Ask par- 
don of the man who has fed your mind by getting you a 
scholarship at college,” cried Moreau. 

Oscar lay with his face on the ground, foaming with rage. 
Everybody was startled. Moreau, quite beside himself, was 
purple in the face from the rush of blood to his head. 

“This boy is mere vanity,” said the count, after waiting in 
vain for Oscar’s apology. “ Pride can humble itself, for 
there is dignity in some self-humiliation. I am afraid you will 
never make anything of this fellow.” 

And the Minister passed on. 

Moreau led Oscar away and back to his own house. 

While the horses were being harnessed to the traveling 
chaise, he wrote the following letter to Madame Clapart : 

“Oscar, my dear, has brought me to ruin. In the course 
of his journey in Pierrotin’s chaise this morning he spoke of 
the flirtations of Madame la Comtesse to his excellency him- 
self, who was traveling incognito, and told the count his own 
secrets as to the skin disease brought on by long nights of 
hard work in his various high offices. After dismissing me 
from my place, the count desired me not to allow Oscar to 
sleep at Presles, but to send him home. In obedience to his 
orders I am having my horses put to my wife’s carriage, and 
Brochon, my groom, will take the little wretch to you. 


320 


A START IN LIFE . 


“ My wife and I are in a state of despair, which you may 
imagine, but which I cannot attempt to describe. I will come 
to see you in a few days, for I must make my plans. I have 
three children ; I must think of the future, and I do not yet 
know what to decide on, for I am determined to show the 
count the value of seventeen years of the life of such a man 
as I. I have two hundred and sixty thousand francs, and I 
mean to acquire such a fortune as will allow me to be, some 
day, not much less than his excellency’s equal. At this in- 
stant I feel that I could remove mountains and conquer insur- 
mountable difficulties. What a lever is such a humiliating 
scene ! 

“Whose blood can Oscar have in his veins? I cannot 
compliment you on your son ; his behavior is that of an owl. 
At this moment of writing he has not yet uttered a word in 
reply to my questions and my wife’s. Is he becoming idiotic, 
or is he idiotic already ? My dear friend, did you not give 
him due injunctions before he started ? How much misfor- 
tune you would have spared me by coming with him, as I 
begged you. If you were afraid of Estelle, you could have 
stayed at Moisselles. However, it is all over now. Farewell 
till we meet, soon. 

“Your faithful friend and servant, 

“ Moreau.” 

At eight o’clock that evening Madame Clapart had come 
in from a little walk with her husband, and sat knitting stock- 
ings for Oscar by the light of a single dip. Monsieur Clapart 
was expecting a friend named Poiret, who sometimes came in 
for a game of dominoes, for he never trusted himself to spend 
an evening in a cafe. In spite of temperance, enforced on 
him by his narrow means, Clapart could not have answered 
for his abstinence when in the midst of food and drink, and 
surrounded by other men, whose laughter might have nettled 
him. 


A START IN LIFE. 


321 


“ I am afraid Poiret may have been and gone,” said he to 
his wife. 

“The lodge-keeper would have told us, my dear,” replied 
his wife. 

“ She may have forgotten.” 

“ Why should she forget ? ” 

“ It would not be the first time she has forgotten things 
that concern us ; God knows, anything is good enough for 
people who have no servants ! ” 

“Well, well,” said the poor woman, to change the subject 
and escape her husband’s pin-stabs. “ Oscar is at Presles by 
this time ; he will be very happy in that beautiful place, that 
fine park ” 

“Oh, yes, you expect great things!” retorted Clapart. 
“ He will make hay there with a vengeance ! ” 

“Will you never cease to be spiteful to that poor boy? 
What harm has he done you ? Dear heaven ! if ever we are 
in easy circumstances we shall owe it to him perhaps, for he 
has a good heart.” 

“ Our bones will be gelatine long before that boy succeeds 
in the world!” said Clapart. “And he will have altered 
very considerably! Why, you don’t know your own boy; 
he is a braggart, a liar, lazy, incapable ” 

“ Supposing you were to go to fetch Poiret,” said the hap- 
less mother, struck to the heart by the diatribe she had brought 
down on her own head. 

“A boy who never took a prize at school ! ” added Clapart. 

In the eyes of the commoner sort, bringing home prizes 
from school is positive proof of future success in life. 

“Did you ever take a prize ? ” retorted his wife. “And 
Oscar got the fourth accessit (second-premium) in philoso- 
phy?” 

This speech reduced Clapart to silence for a moment. 

“And beside,” he presently went on, “Madame Moreau 
must love him as she loves a nail — you know where ; she will 
21 


322 


A START IN LIFE. 


try to set her husband against him. Oscar steward at Presles ! 
Why, he must thoroughly understand land-surveying and agri- 
culture ” 

“ He can learn.” 

“ He ! Never ! I bet you that if he got a place there he 
would not be in it a week before he had done something 
clumsy, and was packed off by the Comte de Serizy ” 

“ Good heavens ! How can you be so vicious about the 
future prospects of a poor boy, full of good points, as sweet as 
an angel, and incapable of doing an ill turn to any living 
soul?” 

At this moment the cracking of a post-boy’s whip and the 
clatter of a chaise at top speed, with the hoofs of horses pulled 
up sharply at the outer gate, had roused the whole street. 
Clapart, hearing every window flung open, went out on the 
landing. 

“ Oscar, sent back by post ! ” cried he in a tone in which 
his satisfaction gave way to genuine alarm. 

“Good God! what can have happened?” said the poor 
mother, trembling as a leaf is shaken by an autumn wind. 

Brochon came upstairs, followed by Oscar and Poiret. 

“Good heavens, what has happened?” repeated she, ap- 
pealing to the groom. 

“ I don’t know, but Monsieur Moreau is no longer steward 
of Presles, and they say it is your son’s doing, and monseig- 
neur has ordered him home again. However, here is a letter 
from poor Monsieur Moreau, who is so altered, madame, it is 
dreadful to see.” 

“ Clapart, a glass of wine for the post-boy and one for 
monsieur,” said his wife, who dropped into an armchair and 
read the terrible letter, “Oscar,” she went on, dragging 
herself to her bed, “ you want to kill your mother! After all 

I said to you this morning ” But Madame Clapart did 

not finish her sentence; she fainted with misery. 

Oscar remained standing, speechless. Madame Clapart, as 


A START IN LIFE . 


323 


she recovered her senses, heard her husband saying to the boy 
as he shook him by the arm — 

“ Will you speak? ” 

“ Go to bed at once, sir,” said she to her son. “ And leave 
him in peace, Monsieur Clapart ; do not drive him out of his 
wits, for he is dreadfully altered ! ” 

Oscar did not hear his mother’s remark; he had made for 
bed the instant he was told. 

Those who have any recollection of their own boyhood will 
not be surprised to hear that, after a day or so full of events 
and agitations, Oscar slept the sleep of the just in spite of the 
enormity of his sins. Nay, next day he did not find the whole 
face of nature so much changed as he expected, and was 
astonished to find that he was hungry, after regarding himself 
the day before as unworthy to live. He had suffered only in 
mind, and at that age mental impressions succeed each other 
so rapidly that each wipes out the last, however deep it may 
have seemed. 

Hence corporal punishment, though philanthropists have 
made a strong stand against it of late years, is in some cases 
necessary for children ; also, it is perfectly natural, for Nature 
herself has no other means but the infliction of pain to pro- 
duce a lasting impression of her lessons. If to give weight to 
the shame, unhappily too transient, which had overwhelmed 
Oscar, the steward had given him a sound thrashing, the 
lesson might have been effectual. The discernment needed 
for the proper infliction of such corrections is the chief argu- 
ment against their use; for Nature never makes a mistake, 
while the teacher must often blunder. 

Madame Clapart took care to send her husband out next 
morning to have her son to herself. She was in a pitiable 
condition. Her eyes red with weeping, her face worn by a 
sleepless night, her voice broken ; everything in her seemed 
to sue for mercy by the signs of such grief as she could not 
have endured a second time. When Oscar entered the room, 


324 


A START IN LIFE. 


she beckoned to him to sit down by her, and in a mild but feel- 
ing voice reminded him of all the kindness done them by the 
steward of Presles. She explained to Oscar that for the last 
six years especially she had lived on Moreau’s ingenious 
charity. Monsieur Clapart’s appointment, which they owed, 
no less than Oscar’s scholarship, to the Comte de Serizy, he 
would some day cease to hold. Clapart could not claim a 
pension, not having served long enough either in the Treasury 
or the city to ask for one. And when Monsieur Clapart 
should be shelved, what was to become of them ? 

“I,” she said, “by becoming a sick-nurse or taking a 
place as housekeeper in some gentleman’s house, could make 
my living and keep Monsieur Clapart ; but what would be- 
come of you? You have no fortune, and you must work for 
your living. There are but four openings for lads like you — 
trade, the civil service, the liberal professions, and military 
service. A young man who has no capital must contribute 
faithful service and brains ; but great discretion is needed in 
business, and your behavior yesterday makes your success very 
doubtful. For an official career you have to begin, for years 
perhaps, as a supernumerary, and need interest to back you ; 
and you have alienated the only protector we ever had — a 
man high in power. And, beside, even if you were blest with 
the exceptional gifts which enable a yoiing man to rise rapidly, 
either in business or in an official position, where are we to 
find the money for food and clothing while you are learning 
your work? ” 

And here his mother, like all women, went off into wordy 
lamentations. What could she do now that she was deprived 
of the gifts of produce which Moreau was able to send her 
while managing Presles? Oscar had overthrown his best 
friend. 

Next to trade and office work, of which her son need not 
even think, came the legal profession as a notary, a pleader, 
an attorney, or a sheriff. But then he must study law for 


A START IN LIFE . 


325 


three years at least, and pay heavy fees for his admission, his 
examinations, his theses , and diploma; the number of com- 
petitors was so great that superior talent was indispensable, 
and how was he to live ? That was the constantly recurring 
question. 

“Oscar,” she said in conclusion, “ all my pride, all my 
life were centred in you. I could bear to look forward to an 
old age of poverty, for I kept my eyes on you ; I saw you 
entering on a prosperous career, and succeeding in it. That 
hope has given me courage to endure the privations I have 
gone through during the last six years to keep you at school, 
for it has cost seven or eight hundred francs a year beside the 
half-scholarship. Now that my hopes are crushed, I dread to 
think of your future fate. I must not spend a sou of Mon- 
sieur Clapart’s salary on my own son. 

“ What do you propose to do ? You are not a good enough 
mathematician to pass into a specialist college ; and, beside, 
where could I find the three thousand francs a year for your 
training? This is life, my dear child ! Well, you are eigh- 
teen, and a strong lad — enlist as a soldier; it is the only way 
you can make a living.” 

Oscar as yet knew nothing of life. Like all boys who have 
been brought up in ignorance of the poverty at home, he had 
no idea of the need to work for his living ; the word trade 
conveyed no idea to his mind ; and the words Government 
office did not mean much, for he knew nothing of the work. 
He listened with a look of submission, which he tried to 
make penitential, but his mother’s remonstrances were lost in 
air. However, at the idea of being a soldier, and on seeing 
the tears in his mother’s eyes, the boy, too, was ready to 
weep. As soon as Madame Clapart saw the drops on her 
boy’s cheeks, she was quite disarmed ; and, like all mothers 
in a similar position, she fell back on the generalities which 
wind up this sort of attack, in which they suffer all their own 
sorrows and their children’s at the same time. 


326 


A START IN LIFE. 


“ Come, Oscar, promise me to be more cautious for the 
future, not to blurt out whatever comes uppermost, to moderate 
your absurd conceit ” and so on. 

Oscar was ready to promise all his mother asked, and, press- 
ing him gently to her heart, Madame Clapart ended by em- 
bracing him to comfort him for the scolding he had had. 

“Now,” said she, “you will listen to your mother and 
follow her advice, for a mother can give her son none but 
good advice. We will go and see your Uncle Cardot. He is 
our last hope. Cardot owed a great deal to your father, who, 
by allowing him to marry his sister, with what was then an 
immense marriage portion, enabled him to make a large 
fortune in silk. I fancy he would place you with Monsieur 
Camusot, his son-in-law and successor, in the Rue des Bour- 
donnais. 

“ Still, your Uncle Cardot has four children of his own. 
He made over his store, the Cocon d’Or (Golden Cocoon), 
to his eldest daughter, Madame Camusot. Though Camusot 
has millions, there are the four children, by two wives, and 
he hardly knows of our existence. Marianne, his second 
girl, married Monsieur Protez, of Protez and Chiffreville. 
He paid four hundred thousand francs to put his eldest son in 
business as a notary ; and he has just invested for his second 
son Joseph as a partner in the business of Matifat, drug 
importers. Thus your Uncle Cardot may very well not choose 
to be troubled about you, whom he sees but four times a year. 
He has never been to call on me here ; but he could come 
to see me when I was in Madame Mire’s household, to be 
allowed to supply silks to their Imperial highnesses, and the 
Emperor, and the grandees at Court. And now the Camusots 
are Ultras / Camusot's eldest son, by his first wife, married 
the daughter of a gentleman usher to the King ! Well, when 
the world stoops it grows hunchbacked. And, after all, it 
is a good business; the Cocon d’Or has the custom of the 
Court under the Bourbons as it had under the Emperor. 


A START IN LIFE . 


327 


“To-morrow we will go to see your Uncle Cardot, and I 
hope you will contrive to behave ; for, as I tell you, in him is 
our last hope.” 

Monsieur Jean-Jerome-Severin Cardot had lost his second 
wife six years since — Mademoiselle Husson — on whom, in the 
days of his glory, the contractor had bestowed a marriage 
portion of a hundred thousand francs in hard cash. Cardot, 
the head-clerk of the Cocon d’Or, one of the old-established 
Paris houses, had bought the business in 1793 when its owners 
were ruined by the maximum , and Mademoiselle Husson’s 
money to back him had enabled him to make an almost colos- 
sal fortune in ten years. To provide handsomely for his 
children, he had very ingeniously invested three hundred 
thousand francs in annuities for himself and his wife, which 
brought him in thirty thousand francs a year. The rest of 
his capital he divided into three portions of four hundred 
thousand francs for his younger children, and the store was 
taken as representing that sum by Camusot when he married 
the eldest girl. Thus the old fellow, now nearly seventy, 
could dispose of his thirty thousand francs a year without 
damaging his children’s interests ; they were all well married, 
and no avaricious hopes could interfere with their filial affec- 
tion. 

Uncle Cardot lived at Belleville in one of the first houses 
just above la Courtille. He rented a second floor, whence 
there was a fine view over the Seine valley, an apartment for 
which he paid a thousand francs a year, facing south, with the 
exclusive enjoyment of a large garden ; thus he never troubled 
himself about the three or four other families inhabiting the 
spacious country house. Secure, by a long lease, of ending 
his days there, he lived rather shabbily, waited on by his old 
cook and by a maid who had been attached to his late wife, 
both of whom looked forward to an annuity of some six hun- 
dred francs at his death, and consequently did not rob him. 


328 


A START IN LIFE. 


These two women took incredible care of their master, and 
with all the more devotion since no one could be less fractious 
or fidgety than he. 

The rooms, furnished by the late Madame Cardot, had re- 
mained unaltered for six years, and the old man was quite 
content ; he did not spend a thousand crowns a year there, 
for he dined out in Paris five days a week, and came home at 
midnight in a private fly'that he took at the Barriere de la 
Courtille. They had hardly anything to do beyond provid- 
ing him with breakfast. The old man breakfasted at eleven 
o’clock, then he dressed and scented himself and went to 
Paris. A man usually gives notice when he means to dine 
out ; Monsieur Cardot gave notice when he was to dine at 
home. 

This little old gentleman, plump, rosy, square, and hearty, 
was always as neat as a pin, as the saying goes ; that is to say, 
always in black silk stockings, corded silk knee-breeches, a 
white marcella vest, dazzlingly white linen, and a dark blue 
coat ; he wore violet silk gloves, gold buckles to his shoes 
and breeches, a touch of powder on his hair, and a small 
queue tied with black ribbon. His face was noticeable for 
the thick, bushy eyebrows, beneath which sparkled his gray 
eyes, and a large squarely-cut nose that made him look like 
some venerable prebendary. This countenance did not belie 
the man. Old Cardot was, in fact, one of the race of frisky 
“Gerontes” who are disappearing day by day, and who 
played the part of Turcaret in all the romances and comedies 
of the eighteenth century. Uncle Cardot would speak to a 
woman as “ Lady fair ; ” he would take home any woman in 
a coach who had no other protector ; he was “ theirs to com- 
mand,” to use his own expression, with a chivalrous flourish. 
His calm face and snowy hair were the adjuncts of an old age 
wholly devoted to pleasure. Among men he boldly professed 
Epicureanism, and allowed himself rather a broad style of 
jokes. He had made no objection when his son-in-law Camu* 


A START IN LIFE. 


329 


sot attached himself to Coralie, the fascinating actress, for 
he was, in secret, the Maecenas of Mademoiselle Florentine,* 
leading dancer at the Gaite theatre. 

Still, nothing appeared on the surface, or in his evident 
conduct, to tell tales of these opinions and this mode of life. 
Uncle Cardot, grave and polite, was supposed to be almost 
cold, such a display did he make of the proprieties, and even 
a bigot would have called him a hypocrite. This worthy 
gentleman particularly detested the priesthood, he was one of 
the large body of silly people who subscribe to the “ Consti- 
tutionnel,” and was much exercised about the refusal of rights 
of burial. He adored Voltaire, though his preference as a 
matter of taste was for Piron, Verde, and Colie. Of course, 
he admired Beranger, of whom he spoke ingeniously as the 
“high-priest of the religion of Lisette.” His daughters, 
Madame Camusot and Madame Protez, and his two sons would 
indeed have been knocked flat, to use a vulgar phrase, if any 
one had told them what their father meant by singing “ La 
Mere Godichon.” 

The shrewd old man had never told his children of his 
annuity; and they, seeing him live so poorly, all believed 
that he had stripped himself of his fortune for them, and 
overwhelmed him with care and affection. And he would 
sometimes say to his sons : “ Do not lose your money, for I 
have none to leave you.” Camusot, who was a man after his 
own heart, and whom he liked well enough to allow him to 
join his little parties, was the only one who knew of his an- 
nuity of thirty thousand francs. Camusot highly applauded 
the old fellow’s philosophy, thinking that after providing so 
liberally for his children and doing his duty so thoroughly, he 
had a right to end his days jovially. 

“ You see, my dear fellow,” the old master of the Cocon 
d’Or would say to his son-in-law, “ I might have married 
again, no doubt, and a young wife would have had children. 

* See “ A Provincial at Paris.” 


330 


A START IN LIFE. 


Oh, yes, I should have had children, I was at an age when 
men always have children. Well, Florentine does not cost 
me so much as a wife, she never bores me, she will not plague 
me with children, and will not make a hole in your fortune.” 
And Camusot discovered in old Cardot an admirable feeling 
for the Family, regarding him as a perfect father-in-law. “ He 
succeeds,” he would say, “in reconciling the interests of his 
children with the pleasures it is natural to indulge in in old 
age after having gone through all the anxieties of business.” 

Neither the Cardots, nor the Camusots, nor the Protez sus- 
pected what the existence was of their old aunt, Madame Cla- 
part. The communications had always been restricted to 
sending formal letters on the occasions of a death or a mar- 
riage, and visiting cards on New Year’s Day. Madame Cla- 
part was too proud to sacrifice her feelings for anything but 
her Oscar’s interests, and acted under the influence of her re- 
gard for Moreau, the only person who had remained faithful 
to her in misfortune. She had never wearied old Cardot by 
her presence or her importunities, but she had clung to him as 
to a hope. She called on him once a quarter, and talked to 
him of Oscar Husson, the nephew of the late respected Mad- 
ame Cardot, taking the lad to see Uncle Cardot three times a 
year, in the holidays. On each occasion the old man took 
Oscar to dine at the Cadran bleu (the Blue Dial), and to the 
Gait6 in the evening, taking him home afterward to the Rue 
de la Cerisaie. On one occasion, after giving him a new suit 
of clothes, he had made him a present of the silver mug and 
spoon and fork required as part of every boarding-school 
boy’s equipment. 

Oscar’s mother had tried to convince the old man that 
Oscar was very fond of him, and she was always talking of the 
silver mug and spoon and the beautiful suit, of which nothing 
now survived but the vest. But these little insinuating atten- 
tions did Oscar more harm than good with so cunning an old 
fox as Uncle Cardot. Old Cardot had not been devoted to 


A START IN LIFE. 


331 


his late lamented, a bony red-haired woman ; also he knew the 
circumstances of the deceased Husson’s marriage to Oscar's 
mother ; and without looking down on her in any way, he 
knew that Oscar had been born after his father’s death, so his 
poor nephew seemed an absolute alien to the Cardot family. 
Unable to foresee disaster, Oscar’s mother had not made up 
for this lack of natural ties between the boy and his uncle, and 
had not succeeded in implanting in the old merchant any 
liking for her boy in his earliest youth. Like all women who 
are absorbed in the one idea of motherhood, Madame Clapart 
could not put herself in Uncle Cardot’s place ; she thought 
he ought to be deeply interested in such a charming boy, 
whose name, too, was that of the late Madame Cardot. 

“ Monsieur, here is the mother of your nephew Oscar,” said 
the maid to Monsieur Cardot, who was airing himself in the 
garden before breakfast, after being shaved and having his 
head dressed by the barber. 

“ Good-morning, lady fair,” said the old silk-merchant, 
bowing to Madame Clapart, while he wrapped his white quilted 
dressing-gown across him. “Ah, ha ! your youngster is grow- 
ing apace,” he added, pulling Oscar by the ear. 

“ He has finished his schooling, and he was very sorry that 
his dear uncle was not present at the distribution of prizes at 
the College Henri IV., for he was named. The name of Hus- 
son, of which, let us hope, he may prove worthy, was honor- 
ably mentioned.” 

“ The deuce it was ! ” said the little man, stopping short. 
He was walking with Madame Clapart and Oscar on a terrace 
where there were orange-trees, myrtles, and pomegranate 
shrubs. “And what did he get? ” 

“The fourth accessit * in philosophy,” said the mother tri- 
umphantly. 

“ Oh, ho. He has some way to go yet to make up for lost 
time,” cried Uncle Cardot. “To end with an accessit — is 
* Second best premium. 


332 


A START IN LIFE. 


not the treasure of Peru. You will breakfast with me?” 
said he. 

“We are at your commands,” replied Madame Clapart. 
“ Oh, my dear Monsieur Cardot, what a comfort it is to a 
father and mother when their children make a good start in 
life. From that point of view, as indeed from every other,” 
she put in, correcting herself, “ you are one of the happiest 
fathers I know. In the hands of your admirable son-in-law 
and your amiable daughter, the Cocon d’Or is still the best 
store of the kind in Paris. Your eldest son has been for years 
as a notary at the head of the best-known business in Paris, 
and he married a rich woman. Your youngest is a partner in 
a first-rate druggist’s business. And you have the sweetest 
grandchildren. You are the head of four flourishing familes. 
Oscar, leave us ; go and walk round the garden, and do not 
touch the flowers.” 

“Why, he is eighteen ! ” exclaimed Uncle Cardot, smiling 
at this injunction, as though Oscar was a child ! 

“Alas ! indeed he is, my dear Monsieur Cardot; and after 
bringing him up to that age neither crooked nor bandy, sound 
in mind and body, after sacrificing everything to give him an 
education, it would be hard indeed not to see him start on the 
way to fortune.” 

“Well, Monsieur Moreau, who got you his half-scholarship 
at the College Henri IV., will start him in the right road,” 
said Uncle Cardot, hiding his hypocrisy under an affectation 
of bluntness. 

“Monsieur Moreau may die,” said she. “Beside, he has 
quarreled beyond remedy with Monsieur le Comte de Serizy, 
his patron.” 

“ The deuce he has ! Listen, madame, I see what you are 
coming to ” 

“ No, monsieur,” said Oscar’s mother, cutting the old man 
short; while he, out of respect for a “lady fair,” controlled 
the impulse of annoyance at being interrupted. “Alas ! you 


A START IN LIFE. 


333 


can know nothing of the anguish of a mother who for seven 
years has been obliged to take six hundred francs a year out 
of her husband’s salary of eighteen hundred. Yes, monsieur, 
that is our whole income. So what can I do for my Oscar? 
Monsieur Clapart so intensely hates the poor boy that I really 
cannot keep him at home. What can a poor woman do under 
such circumstances but come to consult the only relative her 
boy has under heaven ! ” / 

“You did quite right,” replied Monsieur Cardot, “ you 1 
never said anything of all this before ” 

“Indeed, monsieur,” replied Madame Clapart with pride, 
“you are the last person to whom I would confess the depth 
of my poverty. It is all my own fault ; I married a man 
whose incapacity is beyond belief. Oh ! I am a most miser- 
able woman.” 

“Listen, madame,” said the little old man gravely. “ Do 
not cry. I cannot tell you how much it pains me to see a fair 
lady in tears. After all, your boy’s name is Husson ; and if 
the dear departed were alive, she would do something for the 
sake of her father’s and brother’s name ” 

“ She truly loved her brother ! ” cried Oscar’s mother. 

“But all my fortune is divided among my children, who 
have nothing further to expect from me,” the old man went 
on. “I divided the two million francs I had among them; 

I wished to see them happy in my lifetime. I kept nothing 
for myself but an annuity, and at my time of life a man clings 
to his habits. Do you know what you must do with this 
youngster?” said he, calling back Oscar and taking him by 
the arm. “Put him to study law, I will pay for his matricu- 
lation and preliminary fees. Place him with an attorney ; 
let him learn all the tricks of the trade ; if he does well, and 
gets on and likes the work, and if I am still alive, each of my 
children will, when the time comes, lend him a quarter of the 
sum necessary to purchase a connection ; I will stand surety 
for him. From now till then you have only to feed and 


334 


A START IN LIFE . 


clothe him ; he will know some hard times no doubt, but he 
will learn what life is. Why, whyl I set out from Lyons 
with two double louis given me by my grandmother ; I came 
to Paris on foot— and here I am ! Short commons are good 
for the health. Young man, with discretion, honesty, and 
hard work, success is certain. It is a great pleasure to make 
your own fortune ; and when a man has kept his teeth, he eats 
what he likes in his old age, singing ‘ La Mere Godichon * 
every now and then, as I do. Mark my words: Honesty, 
hard work, and discretion.” 

“You hear, Oscar,” said his mother. “Your uncle has 
put in four words the sum-total of all my teaching, and you 
ought to stamp the last on your mind in letters of fire.” 

“ Oh, it is there ! ” replied Oscar. 

“Well, then, thank your uncle; do you not understand 
that he is providing for you in the future? You may be an 
attorney in Paris.” 

“ He does not appreciate the splendor of his destiny,” 
said the old man, seeing Oscar’s bewildered face. “ He has 
but just left school. Listen to me : I am not given to wasting 
words,” his uncle went on. “Remember that at your age 
honesty is only secured by resisting temptations, and in a 
great city like Paris you meet them at every turn. Live in a 
garret under your mother’s roof ; go straight to your lecture, 
and from that to your office ; work away morning, noon, and 
night, and study at home ; be a second clerk by the time you 
are two-and-twenty, and a head-clerk at four-and-twenty. 
Get learning, and you are a made man. And then if you 
should not like that line of work, you might go into my son’s 
office as a notary and succeed him. So work, patience, 
honesty, and discretion — these are your watchwords.” 

“ And God grant you may live another thirty years to see 
your fifth child realize all our expectations ! ” cried Madame 
Clapart, taking the old man’s hand and pressing it with a 
dignity worthy of her young days. 


A START IN LIFE . 


335 


“Come, breakfast,” said the kind old man, leading Oscar 
in by the ear. 

During the meal Uncle Cardot watched his nephew on the 
and soon discovered that he knew nothing of life. 

“ Send him to see me now and then,” said he, as he took 
leave of her, with a nod to indicate Oscar. “ I will lick him 
into shape.” 

This visit soothed the poor woman’s worst grief, for she 
had not looked for such a happy result. For a fortnight she 
took Oscar out walking, watched over him almost tyranni- 
cally, and thus time went on till the end of October, 

One morning Oscar saw the terrible steward walk in to find 
the wretched party in the Rue de la Cerisaie breakfasting off 
a salad of herring and lettuce, with a cup of milk to wash it 
down. 

“ We have settled in Paris, but we do not live as we did at 
Presles,” said Moreau, who intended thus to make Madame 
Clapart aware of the change in their circumstances, brought 
about by Oscar’s misdemeanor. “ But I shall not often be in 
town. I have gone into partnership with old Leger and old 
Margueron of Beaumont. We are land agents, and we began 
by buying the estate of Persan. I am the head of the firm, 
which has altogether a million of francs, for I have borrowed 
on my property. When I find an opening, Pere Leger and 
I go into the matter, and my partners each take a quarter and 
I half of the profits, for I have all the trouble ; I shall always 
be on the road. 

“ My wife lives in Paris very quietly, in the Faubourg du 
Roule. When we have fairly started in business, and shall 
only be risking the interest on our money, if we are satisfied 
with Oscar, we may, perhaps, give him work.” 

“ Well, after all, my friend, my unlucky boy’s blunder will 
no doubt turn out to be the cause of your making a fine 
fortune, for you really were wasting your talents and energy 


336 


A START IN LIFE. 


at Presles.” Madame Clapart then told the story of her 
visit to Uncle Cardot, to show Moreau that she and her son 
might be no further expense to him. 

“ The old man is quite right,” said the ex-steward. “ Oscar 
must be kept to his work with a hand of iron, and he will no 
doubt make a notary or an attorney. But he must not wander 
from the line traced out for him. Ah ! I know the man you 
want. The custom of an estate agent is valuable. I have 
been told of an attorney who has bought a practice without 
any connection. He is a young man, but as stiff as an iron 
bar, a tremendous worker, a perfect horse for energy and go ; 
his name is Desroches. I will offer him all our business on 
condition of his taking Oscar in hand. I will offer him a 
premium of nine hundred francs, of which I will pay three 
hundred ; thus your son will cost you only six hundred, and 
I will recommend him strongly to his master. If the boy is ever 
to become a man, it will be under that iron rule, for he will 
come out a notary, a pleader, or an attorney.” 

“Come, Oscar, thank Monsieur Moreau for his kindness; 
you stand there like a mummy. It is not every youth who 
blunders that is lucky enough to find friends to take an interest 
in him after being injured by him ” 

“ The best way to make matters up with me,” said Moreau, 
taking Oscar’s hand, “ is to work steadily and behave well.” 

Ten days after this Oscar was introduced by Monsieur 
Moreau to Maitre Desroches, attorney, lately established in 
the Rue de Bethisy, in spacious rooms at the end of a narrow 
court, at a relatively low rent. Desroches, a young man of 
six-and-twenty, the son of poor parents, austerely brought up 
by an excessively severe father, had himself known what it was 
to be in Oscar’s position ; he therefore took an interest in him, 
but only in the way of which he was himself capable, with all 
the hardness of his character. The manner of this tall, lean 
young lawyer, with a dull complexion, and his hair cut short 


A START IN LIFE. 


337 


all over his head, sharp in his speech, keen-eyed, and gloomy 
though hasty, terrified poor Oscar. 

“We work day and night here,” said the lawyer from the 
depths of his chair, and from behind a long table, on which 
papers were piled in alps. “ Monsieur Moreau, we will not 
kill him, but he will have to go our pace. Monsieur Godes- 
chal ! ” he called out. 

Although it was Sunday, the head-clerk appeared with a pen 
in his hand. 

“ Monsieur Godeschal, this is the articled pupil of whom I 
spoke, and in whom Monsieur Moreau takes the greatest in- 
terest ; he will dine with us, and sleep in the little attic next 
to your room. You must allow him exactly time enough to 
get to the law-schools and back, so that he has not five minutes 
to lose ; see that he learns the Code, and does well at lecture ; 
that is to say, give him law books to read up when he has done 
his school work. In short, he is to be under your immediate 
direction, and I will keep an eye on him. We want to turn 
him out what you are yourself — a capital head-clerk — by the 
time he is ready to be sworn in as an attorney. Go with 
Godeschal, my little friend ; he will show you your room, and 
you can move into it.” 

“You see, Godeschal?” Desroches went on, addressing 
Moreau. “ He is a youngster without a sou, like myself; he 
is Mariette’s brother, and she is saving for him, so that he 
may buy a connection ten years hence. All my clerks are 
youngsters, who have nothing to depend on but their ten 
fingers to make their fortune. And my five clerks and I work 
like any dozen of other men. In ten years I shall have the 
finest practice in Paris. We take a passionate interest here in 
our business and our clients, and that is beginning to be 
known. I got Godeschal from my greater brother in the 
law, Derville ; with him he was second clerk, though only for 
a fortnight ; but we had made friends in that huge office. 

“ I give Godeschal a thousand francs a year, with board and 
22 


338 


A START IN LIFE. 


lodging. The fellow is worth it to me ; he is indefatigable ! 
I like that boy ! He managed to live on six hundred francs a 
year, as I did when I was a clerk. What I absolutely insist on 
is stainless honesty, and the man who can practice it in pov- 
erty is a man. The slightest failing on that score, and a clerk 
of mine goes ! ” 

“ Come, the boy is in a good school,” said Moreau. 

For two whole years Oscar lived in the Rue de Bethisy, in 
a den of the law ; for if ever this old-fashioned term could be 
applied to a lawyer’s office, it was to this of Desroches. Under 
this minute and strict supervision, he was kept so rigidly to 
hours and to work that his life in the heart of Paris was like 
that of a monk. 

At five in the morning, in all weathers, Godeschal woke. 
He went down to the office with Oscar, to save a fire, and 
they always found the “chief” up and at work. Oscar did 
the errands and prepared his school-work — studies on an enor- 
mous scale. Godeschal, and often the chief himself, showed 
their pupil what authors to compare, and the difficulties to be 
met. Oscar was never allowed to pass from one chapter of 
the Code to the next till he had thoroughly mastered it, and 
had satisfied both Desroches and Godeschal, who put him 
through preliminary examinations, far longer and harder than 
those of the law-schools. 

On his return from the schools, where he did not spend 
much time, he resumed his seat in the office and worked 
again ; sometimes he went into the Courts, and he was at the 
bidding of the merciless Godeschal till dinner-time. Dinner, 
which he shared with his masters, consisted of a large dish of 
meat, a dish of vegetables, and a salad ; for dessert there was 
a bit of Gruy£re cheese. After dinner, Godeschal and Oscar 
went back to the office and worked there till the evening. 

Once a month Oscar went to breakfast with his Uncle Car 
dot, and he spent the Sundays with his mother. Moreau from 


A START IN LIFE . 


339 


time to time, if he came to the office on business, would take 
the boy to dine at the Palais-Royal and treat him to the play. 
Oscar had been so thoroughly snubbed by Godeschal and Des- 
roches on the subject of his craving after fashion that he had 
ceased to think about dress. 

(( A good clerk,” said Godeschal, “ should have two black 
coats — one old and one new — black trousers, black stockings 
and shoes. Boots cost too much. You may have boots when 
you are an attorney. A clerk ought not to spend more than 
seven hundred francs in all. He should wear good, strong 
shirts of stout linen. Oh, when you start from zero to make 
a fortune, you must know how to limit yourself to what is 
strictly needful. Look at Monsieur Desroches ! He did as 
we are doing, and you see he has succeeded.” 

Godeschal practiced what he preached. Professing the 
strictest principles of honor, reticence, and honesty, he acted 
on them without any display, as simply as he walked and 
breathed. It was the natural working of his soul, as walking 
and breathing are the working of certain organs. 

Eighteen months after Oscar’s arrival, the second clerk had 
made, for the second time, a small mistake in the accounts of 
his little cash-box. Godeschal addressed him in the presence 
of all the clerks — 

“ My dear Gaudet, leave on your own account, that it may 
not be said that the chief turned you out. You are either in- 
accurate or careless, and neither of those faults is of any use 
here. The chief shall not know, and that is the best I can 
do for an old fellow-clerk.” 

Thus, at the age of twenty, Oscar was third clerk in Maitre 
Desroches* office. Though he earned no salary, yet he was 
fed and lodged, for he did the work of a second clerk. Des- 
roches employed two managing clerks, and the second clerk 
was overdone with work. By the time he had got through his 
second year at the schools, Oscar, who knew more than many 
a man who has taken out his license, did the work of the 


340 


A START IN LIFE . 


Courts very intelligently, and occasionally pleaded in cham- 
bers. In fact, Desroches and Godeschal expressed themselves 
satisfied. 

Still, though he had become almost sensible, he betrayed a 
love of pleasure and a desire to shine, which were only sub- 
dued by the stern discipline and incessant toil of the life he 
led. The estate agent, satisfied with the boy’s progress, then 
relaxed his strictness; and when, in the month of July, 1825, 
Oscar passed his final examination, Moreau gave him enough 
money to buy some good clothes. Madame Clapart, very 
happy and proud of her son, prepared a magnificent outfit for 
the qualified attorney, the second clerk, as he was soon to be. 
In poor families a gift always takes the form of something use- 
ful. 

When the Courts reopened in the month of November, 
Oscar took the second clerk’s room and his place, with a 
salary of eight hundred francs, board and lodging. And 
Uncle Cardot, who came privately to make inquiries about 
his nephew of Desroches, promised Madame Clapart that he 
would put Oscar in a position to buy a connection if he went 
on as he had begun. 

In spite of such seeming wisdom, Oscar Husson was torn 
by many yearnings in the bottom of his soul. Sometimes he 
felt as if he must fly from a life so entirely opposed to his taste 
and character ; a galley slave, he thought, was happier than 
he. Galled by his iron collar, he was sometimes tempted to 
run away when he compared himself with some well-dressed 
youth he met in the street. Now and then an impulse of 
folly with regard to women would surge up in him ; and his 
resignation was only a part of his disgust of life. Kept steady 
by Godeschal’ s example, he was dragged rather than led by 
his will to follow so thorny a path. 

Godeschal, who watched Oscar, made it his rule not to put 
his ward in the way of temptation. The boy had usually no 
money, or so little that he could not run into excesses. Dur- 


A START IN LIFE. 


341 


ing the last year the worthy Godeschal had five or six times 
taken Oscar out for some “ lark,” paying the cost, for he per- 
ceived that the cord round this tethered kid’s neck must be 
loosened ; and these excesses, as the austere head-clerk termed 
them, helped Oscar to endure life. He found little to amuse 
him at his uncle’s house, and still less at his mother’s, for she 
lived even more frugally than Desroches. 

Moreau could not, like Godeschal, make himself familiar 
with Oscar, and it is probable that this true protector made 
Godeschal his deputy in initiating the poor boy into the 
many mysteries of life. Oscar, thus learning discretion, 
could at last appreciate the enormity of the blunder he had 
committed during his ill-starred journey in the coucou ; still, 
as the greater part of his fancies were so far suppressed, the 
follies of youth might yet lead him astray. However, as by 
degrees he acquired knowledge of the world and its ways, his 
reason developed ; and so long as Godeschal did not lose 
sight of him, Moreau hoped to train Madame Clapart’s son 
to a good end. 

“ How is he going on?” the estate agent asked on his 
return from a journey which had kept him away from Paris 
for some months. 

“Still much too vain,” replied Godeschal. “You give 
him good clothes and fine linen, he wears shirt-frills like a 
stockbroker, and my gentleman goes to walk in the Tuileries 
on Sundays in search of adventures. What can I say? He 
is young. He teases me to introduce him to my sister, 
in whose house he would meet a famous crew 1 — actresses, 
dancers, dandies, men who are eating themselves out of house 
and home. He is not cut out for an attorney, I fear. Still, 
he does not speak badly ; he might become a pleader. He 
could argue a case from a well-prepared brief.” 

In November, 1825, when Oscar Husson was made second 
clerk, and was preparing his thesis for taking out his license, 


342 


A START IN LIFE. 


a new fourth clerk came to Desroches’ office to fill up the gap 
made by Oscar’s promotion. 

This fourth clerk, whose name was Frederic Marest, was 
intended for the higher walks of the law, and was now ending 
his third year at the schools. From information received by 
the inquiring minds of the office, he was a handsome fellow 
I of three-and-twenty, who had inherited about twelve thousand 
I francs a year at the death of a bachelor uncle, and the son of 
| a Madame Marest, the widow of a rich lumber merchant. 
The future judge, filled with the laudable desire to know his 
business in its minutest details, placed himself under Des- 
roches, intending to study procedure, so as to be fit to take 
the place of a managing clerk in two years’ time. His pur- 
pose was to go through his first stages as a pleader in Paris, 
so as to be fully prepared for an appointment, which, as a 
young man of wealth, he would certainly get. To see himself 
a public prosecutor, at the age of thirty, was the height of his 
ambition. 

Though Frederic Marest was the first cousin of Georges 
Marest, the practical joker of the journey to Presles, as young 
Husson knew this youth only by his first name, as Georges, 
the name of Frederic Marest had no suggestions for him. 

“Gentlemen,” said Godeschal at breakfast, addressing all 
his underlings, “ I have to announce the advent of a new 
student in law ; and as he is very rich, we shall, I hope, make 
him pay his footing handsomely.” 

“Bring out the Book,” cried Oscar to the youngest clerk, 
“and let us be serious, pray.” 

The boy clambered like a squirrel along the pigeon-holes 
to reach a volume lying on the top shelf, so as to collect all 
the dust. 

“ It is finely colored ! ” said the lad, holding it up. 

We must now explain the perennial pleasantry which at 
that time gave rise to the existence of such a book in almost 
every lawyer’s office. An old saying of the eighteenth cen- 


A START IN LIFE. 


343 


tury — “ Clerks only breakfast, farmers generally dine, and 
lords sup” — is still true, as regards the faculty of law, of 
every man who has spent two or three years studying proce- 
dure under an attorney, or the technicalities of a notary’s 
business under some master of that branch. In the life of a 
lawyer’s clerk work is so unremitting that pleasure is enjoyed 
all the more keenly for its rarity, and a practical joke espe- 
cially is relished with rapture. This, indeed, is what explains 
up to a certain point Georges Marest’s behavior in Pierrotin’s 
chaise. The gloomiest of law-clerks is always a prey to the 
craving for farcical buffoonery. The instinct with which a 
practical joke or an occasion for fooling is jumped at and 
utilized among law-clerks is marvelous to behold, and is found 
in no other class but among artists. The studio and the 
lawyer’s office are, in this respect, better than the stage. 

Desroches, having started in an office without a connection, 
had, as it were, founded a new dynasty. This “ Restoration ” 
had interrupted the traditions of the office with regard to the 
footing of a new-comer. Desroches, indeed, settling in quar- 
ters where stamped paper had never yet been seen, had put in 
new tables and clean new file-boxes of white mill-board edged 
with blue. His staff consisted of clerks who had come from 
other offices with no connection between them, and thrown 
together by surprise, as it were. 

But Godeschal, who had learned his fence under Derville, 
was not the man to allow the precious tradition of the Bieti- 
vetiue to be lost. The Bienvenue , or welcome, is the break- 
fast which every new pupil must give to the “old boys” of 
the office to which he is articled. Now, just at the time when 
Oscar joined the office, in the first six months of Desroches’ 
career, one winter afternoon when work was through much 
earlier than usual, and the clerks were warming themselves 
before going home, Godeschal hit upon the notion of con- 
cocting a sham register of the fasti and High Festivals of the 
Minions of the Law, a relic of great antiquity, saved from the 


344 


A START IN LIFE. 


storms of the Revolution, and handed down from the office of 
the great Bordin, Attorney to the Chatelet, and the imme- 
diate predecessor of Sauvagnest, the attorney from whom 
Desroches had taken the office. The first thing was to find 
in some stationer’s old stock a ledger with paper bearing an 
eighteenth-century watermark, and properly bound in parch- 
ment, in which to enter the decrees of the Council. Having 
discovered such a volume, it was tossed in the dust, in the 
ashes-pan, in the fireplace, in the kitchen ; it was even left in 
what the clerks called the deliberating-room ; and it had ac- 
quired a tint of mildew that would have enchanted a book- 
worm, the cracks of primeval antiquity, and corners so worn 
that the mice might have nibbled them off. The edges were 
rubbed with infinite skill. The book being thus perfected, 
here are a few passages which will explain to the dullest the 
uses to which Desroches’ clerks devoted it, the first sixty 
pages being filled with sham reports of cases. 

“ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the 
Holy Ghost. So be it. 

“Whereas, on this day the Festival of our Lady Saint- 
Genevieve, patron saint of this good city of Paris, under 
whose protection the scribes and scriveners of this office have 
dwelt since the year of our Lord, 1525, we, the undersigned 
clerks and scriveners of this office of Master Jerosme-Sebastien 
Bordin, successor here to the deceased Guerbet, who in his 
lifetime served as attorney to the Chatelet, have recognized 
the need for us to replace the register and archives of instal- 
lations of clerks in this glorious office, being ourselves dis- 
tinguished members of the Faculty of the Law, which former 
register is now filled with the roll and record of our well- 
beloved predecessors, and we have besought the keeper of the 
Palace archives to bestow it with those of other offices, and we 
have all attended high mass in the parish church of Saint- 
Severin to solemnize the opening of this our new register. 


A START IN LIFE. 


345 


li In token whereof, we here sign and affix our names. 

“ Malin, Head-Clerk. 

“ Grevin, Second Clerk. 

“Athanase Feret, Clerk. 

“Jacques Huet, Clerk. 

“Regnald de Saint-Jean-d’Angely, Clerk. 

“ Bedeau, Office Boy and Gutter-jumper. 

“ In the year of our Lord, 1787. 

“ Having attended mass, we went in a body to la Courtille, 
and had a great breakfast, which lasted until seven of the 
next morning.’ * 

This was a miracle of caligraphy. An expert could have 
sworn that the writing dated from the eighteenth century. Then 
follow twenty-seven reports in full of “Welcome” break- 
fasts, the last dating from the fatal year of 1792. 

After a gap of fourteen years, the register reopened in 1806 
with the appointment of Bordin to be attorney to the lower 
Court of the Seine. And this was the record of the re-con- 
stitution of the Kingdom of Basoche (the legal profession 
generally) : 

“ God in His clemency has granted that in the midst of 
the storms which have devastated France, now a great Empire, 
the precious archives of the most illustrious office of Master 
Bordin should be preserved. And we, the undersigned clerks 
of the most honorable and most worshipful Master Bordin, 
do not hesitate to ascribe this their marvelous escape, when so 
many other title-deeds, charters, and letters-patent have van- 
ished, to the protection of Saint-Genevieve, the patron saint 
of this office, as likewise to the reverence paid by the last of 
the attorneys of the old stock to all ancient use and custom. 
And whereas we know not what share to ascribe to the Lady 
Saint-Genevieve and what to Master Bordin in the working of 

M 


346 


A START IN LIFE . 


this miracle, we have resolved to go to the Church , of Saint 
Etienne-du-Mont, there to attend a mass to be said at the 
altar of that saintly shepherdess who sendeth us so many lambs 
to fleece, and to invite our chief and master to breakfast, in 
the hope that he may bear the charges thereof. And to this 
we set our hand. 

“ Oignard, Head-Clerk. 

“ Poidevin, Second Clerk. 

“ Proust, Clerk. 

“Brignolet, Clerk. 

“ Derville, Clerk. 

“ Augusten Coret, Office Boy. 

“ At the office, this ioth day of November, 1806.” 

“At three o’clock of the afternoon of the next day, the 
undersigned, being the clerks of this office, record their grati- 
tude to their very worshipful chief, who hath feasted them at 
the shop of one Rolland, a cook in the Rue du Hasard, on 
good wines of three districts, Bordeaux, Champagne, and 
Burgundy, and on meats of good savor, from four o’clock of 
the afternoon until half-past seven, with coffee, liqueurs, and 
ices galore. Yet hath the presence of the worshipful master 
hindered us from the singing of laudes (praises) in clerkly 
modes, nor hath any clerk overstepped the limits of pleasing 
levity, inasmuch as our worthy, worshipful, and generous 
master hath promised to take us his clerks to see Talma in 
t Britannicus ’ at the Theatre Fran^ais. Long may he 
flourish ! May heaven shed blessings on our worshipful 
master ! May he get a good price for this his glorious office ! 
May rich clients come to his heart’s desire ! May his bills 
of costs be paid in gold on the nail ! May all our future mas- 
ters be like him ! May he be ever beloved of his clerks, even 
when he is no more.” 

Next came thirty-three reports in due form of the receptions 


A START IN LIFE. 


347 


of clerks who had joined the office, distinguished by various 
handwritings in different shades of ink, distinct phraseology, 
and different signatures, and containing such laudatory ac- 
counts of the good-cheer and wines as seemed to prove that 
the reports were drawn up on the spot and while they were in 
their cups. 

Finally, in the month of June, 1822, at the time when Des- 
roches himself had taken the oaths, there was this page of 
business-like prose : 

“ I, the undersigned Frangois-Claude-Marie Godeschal, 
being called by Maitre Desroches to fulfill the difficult duties 
of head-clerk in an office where there are as yet no clients, 
having heard from Maitre Derville, whose chambers I have 
quitted, of the existence of certain famous archives of Baso- 
chian banquets and Festivals famous in the Courts, I besought 
our worshipful master to require them of his predecessor ; for 
it was important to recover that document, which bore the 
date a. d. 1786, and was the sequel to the archives, deposited 
with those of the Courts of Law, of which the existence was 
certified by MM. Terrasse and Duclos, keepers of the said 
archives, going back to the year 1525, and giving historical 
details of the highest value as to the manners and cookery of 
the law-clerks in those days. 

“ This having been granted, the office was put in possession 
as at this time of these evidences of the worship constantly 
paid by our predecessors to the Dive Bouteille (divine bottle) 
and to good-cheer. 

“Whereupon, for the edification of those that come after 
us, and to continue the sequence of time and cup, I have in- 
vited MM. Doublet, second clerk; Vassal, third clerk ; Heris- 
son and Grandemain, assistant clerks; Dumets, office-boy, to 
breakfast on Sunday next at the Red Horse ( Cheval Rouge), 
on the Quai Saint-Bernard, where we will celebrate the re- 
covery of this volume containing the charter of our guzzlings. 


348 


A START IN LIFE. 


“On this day, Sunday, June 27th, one dozen bottles of 
various wines were drunk and found excellent. Noteworthy, 
likewise, were two melons, pies au jus romanum , a fillet of 
beef, and a toast Agaricibus. Mademoiselle Mariette, the 
illustrious sister of the head-clerk, and leading lady at the 
Royal Academy of Music and Dancing, having given to the 
clerks of this office stalls for that evening’s performance, she 
is hereby to be remembered for her act of generosity. And 
it is furthermore resolved that the said clerks shall proceed in a 
body to return thanks to that noble damsel, and to assure her 
that on the occasion of her first lawsuit, if the devil involves 
her in one, she shall pay no more than the bare costs ; to which 
all set their hand. 

“ Godeschal was proclaimed the pride of his profession 
and the best of good fellows. May the man who treats others 
so handsomely soon be treating for a business of his own ! ” 

The document was bespattered with wine-spots and with blots 
and flourishes like fireworks. 

To give a complete idea of the stamp of truth impressed on 
this great work, it will suffice to extract the report of the re- 
ception supposed to have been provided by Oscar : 

“To-day, Monday, the 25th day of November, 1822, after 
a meeting held yesterday in the Rue de la Cerisaie, hard by 
the Arsenal, at the house of Madame Clapart, the mother of 
the new pupil, by name Oscar Husson, we, the undersigned, 
declare that the breakfast far surpassed our expectations. It 
included radishes (red and black), gherkins, anchovies, butter, 
and olives as introductory hors-d' oeuvres (side-dishes); of a 
noble rice soup that bore witness to a mother’s care, inasmuch 
as we recognized in it a delicious flavor of chicken ; and by 
the courtesy of the founder of the feast we were, in fact, in- 
formed that the trimmings of a handsome cold dish prepared 
by Madame Clapart had been judiciously added to the stock 


A START IN LIFE. 


349 


concocted at home with such care as is known only in private 
kitchens. 

“Item: the aforementioned cold chicken, surrounded by a 
sea of jelly, the work of the aforenamed mother. 

“Item : an ox-tongue, aux tomates (with tomatoes), on which 
we proved ourselves by no means au-tomata. 

“Item: a stew of pigeons of such flavor as led us to be- 
lieve that angels had watched over the pot. 

“Item : a dish of macaroni flanked by cups of chocolate 
custard. 

“Item: dessert, consisting of eleven dishes, among which, 
in spite of the intoxication resulting from sixteen bottles of 
excellent wine, we discerned the flavor of an exquisitely and 
superlatively delicious preserve of peaches. 

“The wines of Roussillon and of the Cote du Rhone quite 
outdid those of Champagne and Burgundy. A bottle of 
Maraschino, and one of Kirsch, finally, and in spite of deli- 
cious coffee, brought us to such a pitch of oenological rapture, 
that one of us — namely, Master Herisson — found himself in 
the Bois de Boulogne when he believed he was still on the 
Boulevard du Temple ; and that Jacquinaut, the gutter-jumper, 
aged fourteen, spoke to citizens’ wives of fifty-seven, taking 
them for women of the street ; to which all set their hand. 

“ Now, in the statutes of our Order there is a law strictly 
observed, which is, that those who aspire to the benefits and 
honors of the profession of the law shall restrict the magnifi- 
cence of their ‘welcome’ to the due proportion with their 
fortune, inasmuch as it is a matter of public notoriety that no 
man with a private income serves Themis, and that all clerks 
are kept short of cash by their fond parents; wherefore, it is 
with great admiration that we here record the munificence of 
Madame Clapart, widow after her first marriage of Monsieur 
Husson, the new licentiate’s father, and declare that it was 
worthy of the cheers we gave her at dessert; to which all set 
their hand.” 


350 


A START IN LIFE. 


This rigmarole had already taken in three new-comers, and 
three real breakfasts were duly recorded in this imposing 
volume. 

On the day when a neophyte first made his appearance in 
the office, the boy always laid the archives on the desk in 
front of his seat, and the clerks chuckled as they watched the 
face of the new student while he read these grotesque passages. 
Each in turn, inter pocula , had been initiated into the secret 
of this practical joke, and the revelation, as may be supposed, 
filled them with the hope of mystifying other clerks in the 
future. 

So, now, my readers can imagine the countenances of the 
four clerks and the boy, when Oscar, now in his turn the 
practical joker, uttered the words, “ Bring out the Book.” 

Ten minutes later, a handsome young man came in, well 
grown and pleasant-looking, a'sked for Monsieur Desroches, 
and gave his name at once to Godeschal. 

“ I am Frederic Marest,” said he, “ and have come to fill 
the place of third clerk here.” 

“Monsieur Husson,” said Godeschal, “show the gentle- 
man his seat, and induct him into our ways of work.” 

Next morning the new clerk found the Book lying on his 
writing-pad ; but after reading the first pages, he only laughed, 
gave no invitation, and put the book aside on his desk. 

“Gentlemen,” said he, as he was leaving at five o’clock, 
“ I have a cousin who is managing-clerk to Maitre Leopold 
Hannequin, the notary, and I will consult him as to what I 
should do to pay my footing.” 

“This looks badly,” cried Godeschal. “Our sucking 
magistrate is no greenhorn.” 

“ Oh ! we will lead him a life ! ” said Oscar. 

Next afternoon, at about two o’clock, Oscar saw a visitor 
come in, and recognized in Hannequin’s head-clerk Georges 
Marest. 


A START IN LIFE. 


351 


“Why, here is Ali Pasha’s friend!” said he, in an airy 
tone. 

“What? you here, my lord, the Ambassador?” retorted 
Georges, remembering Oscar. 

“Oh, ho! then you are old acquaintances?” said Godes- 
chal to Georges. 

“I believe you! We played the fool in company,” said 
Georges, “above two years ago. Yes, I left Crottat to go to 
Hannequin in consequence of that very affair.” 

“What affair?” asked Godeschal. 

“Oh, a mere nothing,” replied Georges, with a wink at 
Oscar. “ We tried to make game of a peer of France, and it 
was he who made us look foolish. And now, I hear you want 
to draw my cousin.” 

“We do not draw anything,” said Oscar with dignity. 
“ Here is our charter.” And he held out the famous volume 
at a page where sentence of excommunication was recorded 
against a refractory student, who had been fairly driven out 
of the office for stinginess in 1788. 

“Still, I seem to smell game,” said Georges, “for here is 
the trail,” and he pointed to the farcical archives. “How- 
ever, my cousin and I can afford it, and we will give you a 
feast such as you never had, and which will stimulate your 
imagination when recording it here. To-morrow, Sunday, at 
the Rocher de Cancale, two o’clock. And I will take you 
afterward to spend the evening with Madame la Marquise de 
las Florentinas y Cabirolos, where we will gamble, and you 
will meet the 6lite of fashion. And so, gentlemen of the 
lower Court,” he went on, with the arrogance of a notary, “ let 
us have your best behavior, and carry your wine like gentlemen 
of the Regency.” 

“Hurrah!” cried the clerks like one man. “Bravo! — 
Very well / — Vivat / (bravo). — Long live the Marests ! ” 

“ Pontins'' added the boy (Les Marais Pontins — the Pon- 
tine Marshes). 


352 


A START IN LIFE. 


“ What is up? ” asked Desroches, coming out of his private 
room. “ Ah ! you are here, Georges,” said he to the visitor. 
“ I know you, you are leading my clerks into mischief.” 
And he went back into his own room, calling Oscar. 

“Here,” said he, opening his cash-box, “are five hundred 
francs; go to the Palace of Justice and get the judgment in 
the case of Vandenesse v. Vandenesse out of the copying- 
clerk’s office ; it must be sent in this evening if possible. I 
promised Simon a refresher of twenty francs ; wait for the 
copy if it is not ready, and do not let yourself be put off. 
Derville is quite capable of putting a drag on our wheels if it 
will serve his client. Count Felix de Vandenesse is more 
influential than his brother the ambassador, our client. So 
keep your eyes open, and, if the least difficulty arises, come to 
me at once.” 

Oscar set out, determined to distinguish himself in this 
little skirmish, the first job that had come to him since his 
promotion. 

When Georges and Oscar were both gone, Godeschal tried 
to pump the new clerk as to what jest might lie, as he felt 
sure, under the name of the Marquise de las Florentinas y 
Cabirolos ; but Frederic carried on his cousin’s joke with the 
coolness and gravity of a judge, and by his replies and his 
manner contrived to convey to all the clerks that the Marquise 
de las Florentinas was the widow of a Spanish grandee, whom 
his cousin was courting. Born in Mexico, and the daughter 
of a creole, this wealthy young widow was remarkable for 
the free-and-easy demeanor characteristic of the women of 
the Tropics. 

“ 1 She likes to laugh, She likes to drink, She likes to sing 
as we do,’ ” said he, quoting a famous song by Beranger. 
“And Georges,” he went on, “is very rich; he inherited a 
fortune from his father, who was a widower, and who left 
him eighteen thousand francs a year, which, with twelve thou- 
sand left to each of us by an uncle, make an income of thirty 


A START IN LIFE. 


353 


thousand francs. And he hopes to be Marquis de las Floren- 
tinas, for the young widow bears her title in her own right, 
and can confer it on her husband.” 

Though the clerks remained very doubtful as to the mar- 
quise, the prospect of a breakfast at the Rocher de Cancale, 
and of a fashionable soiree, filled them with joy. They 
reserved their opinion as to the Spanish lady, to judge her 
without appeal after having seen her. 

The Marquise de las Florentinas was, in fact, neither more 
nor less than Mademoiselle Agathe Florentine Cabirolle, 
leading dancer at the Gaite Theatre, at whose house Uncle 
Cardot sang “La Mere Godichon.” Within a year of the 
very reparable loss of the late Madame Cardot, the fortunate 
merchant met Florentine one evening coming out of Coulon’s 
dancing school. Dazzled by the beauty of this flower of the 
ballet — Florentine was then but thirteen — the retired store- 
keeper followed her to the Rue Pastourelle, where he had the 
satisfaction of learning that the future divinity of the dance 
owed her existence to a humble doorkeeper. The mother 
and daughter, transplanted within a fortnight to the Rue de 
Crussol, there found themselves in modest but easy circum- 
stances. So it was to this “Patron of the Arts,” to use 
a time-honored phrase, that the stage was indebted for the 
budding artist. 

The generous Maecenas almost turned their simple brains 
by given them mahogany furniture, curtains, carpets, and a 
well-fitted kitchen ; he enabled them to keep a servant, and 
allowed them two hundred and fifty francs a month. Old 
-Cardot, with his ailes de pigeon ,* to them seemed an angel, 
and was treated as a benefactor should be. This was the 
golden age of the old man’s passion. 

For three years the singer of “La Mere Godichon” was 
so judicious as to keep Mademoiselle Cabirolle and her 
mother in this unpretentious house, close to the theatre ; then, 
* Pigeon-wings : style of his hair. 


23 


354 


A START JN LIFE. 


for love of the Terpsichorean art, he placed his protege 
under Vestris. And, in 1820, he was so happy as to see 
Florentine dance her first steps in the ballet of a spectacular 
melodrama called “ The Ruins of Babylon.’ ’ Florentine was 
now sixteen. 

Soon after this first appearance Uncle Cardot was “an old 
screw,” in the young lady’s estimation; however, as he had 
tact enough to understand that a dancer at the Gaite Theatre 
must keep up a position, and raised her monthly allowance to 
five hundred francs a month, if he was no longer an angel, 
he was at least a friend for life, a second father. This was 
the age of silver. 

Between 1820 and 1823 Florentine went through the ex- 
perience which must come to every ballet-dancer of nineteen or 
twenty. Her friends were the famous opera-singers Mariette 
and Tullia, Florine, and poor Coralie, so early snatched from 
Art, Love, and Camusot. And as little Uncle Cardot himself 
was now five years older, he had drifted into the indulgence 
of that half-fatherly affection which old men feel for the young 
talents they have trained, and whose successes are theirs. 
Beside, how and where should a man of sixty-eight have 
formed such another attachment as this with Florentine, who 
knew his ways, and at whose house he could sing “ La Mere 
Godichon” with his friends? So the little man found him- 
self under a half-matrimonial yoke of irresistible weight. This 
was the age of brass. 

In the course of the five years of the ages of gold and of 
silver, Cardot had saved ninety thousand francs. The old man 
had had much experience ; he foresaw that by the time he was 
seventy Florentine would be of age; she would probably 
come out on the opera stage, and, of course, expect the luxury 
and splendor of a leading lady. Only a few days before the 
evening now to be described, Cardot had spent forty-five 
thousand francs in establishing his Florentine in a suitable 
style, and had taken for her the apartment where the now 


A START IN LIFE. 


355 


dead Coralie had been the joy of Camusot. In Paris, apart- 
ments and houses, like streets, have a destiny. 

Glorying in magnificent plate, the leading lady of the 
Gaite gave handsome dinners, spent three hundred francs a 
month on dress, never went out but in a private cabriolet, and 
kept a maid, a cook, and a page. What she aimed at, indeed, 
was a command to dance at the opera. The Cocon d’Or laid 
its handsomest products at the feet of its former master to 
please Mademoiselle Cabirolle, known as Florentine, just as, 
three years since, it had gratified every wish of Coralie’s; but 
still without the knowledge of Uncle Cardot’s daughter, for 
the father and his son-in-law had always agreed that decorum 
must be respected at home. Madame Camusot knew nothing 
of her husband’s extravagance or her father’s habits. 

Now, after being the master for seven years, Cardot felt 
himself in tow of a pilot whose power of caprice was unlimited. 
But the unhappy old fellow was in love. Florentine alone 
must close his eyes, and he meant to leave her a hundred 
thousand francs. The age of iron had begun. 

Georges Marest, handsome, young, and rich, with thirty 
thousand francs a year, was paying court to Florentine. Every 
dancer is by way of loving somebody as her protector loves 
her, and having a young man to escort her out walking or 
driving, and arrange excursions into the country. And, how- 
ever disinterested, the affections of a leading lady are always 
a luxury, costing the happy object of her choice some little 
trifle. Dinners at the best restaurants, boxes at the play, 
carriages for driving in the environs of Paris, and choice 
wines lavishly consumed — for ballet-dancers live now like the 
athletes of antiquity. 

Georges, in short, amused himself as young men do who 
suddenly find themselves independent of paternal discipline; 
and his uncle’s death, almost doubling his income, enlarged 
his ideas. So long as he had but the eighteen thousand francs 
a year left him by his parents he intended to be a notary; 


356 


A START IN LIFE. 


but, as his cousin remarked to Desroches’ clerks, a man would 
be a noodle to start in a profession with as much money as 
others have when they give it up. So the retiring law-clerk 
was celebrating his first day of freedom by this breakfast, 
which was also to pay his cousin’s footing. 

Frederic, more prudent than Georges, persisted in his legal 
career. 

As a fine young fellow like Georges might very well marry 
a rich creole, and the Marquise de las Florentinas y Cabirolos 
might very well in the decline of life — as Frederic hinted to 
his new companions — have preferred to marry for beauty 
rather than for noble birth, the clerks of Desroches’ office — 
all belonging to impecunious families, and having no acquaint- 
ance with the fashionable world — got themselves up in their 
Sunday clothes, all impatience to see the Mexican Marquesa 
de las Florentinas y Cabirolos. 

‘ ‘What good-luck,” said Oscar to Godeschal as he dressed 
in the morning, “ that I should have just ordered a new coat, 
vest, trousers, and a pair of boots, and that my precious 
mother should have given me a new outfit on my promotion 
to be second clerk. I have six fine shirts with frills out of 
the dozen she gave me. We will make a good show? Oh ! 
if only one of us could carry off the marquise from that 
Georges Marest ! ’ ’ 

“ A pretty thing for a clerk in Maitre Desroches’ office ! ” 
cried Godeschal. * 4 Will you never be cured of your vanity 
—brat ! ” 

“ Oh, monsieur,” said Madame Clapart, who had just come 
in to bring her son some ties, and heard the managing clerk’s 
remarks, “ would to God that Oscar would follow your good 
advice ! It is what I am always saying to him, ‘ Imitate Mon- 
sieur Godeschal, take his advice,’ is what I say.” 

“He is getting on, madame,” said Godeschal, “but he 
must not often be so clumsy as he was yesterday, or he will 
lose his place in the master’s good graces. Maitre Desroches 


A START IN LIFE. 


357 


cannot stand a man who is beaten. He sent your son on his 
first errand yesterday, to fetch away the copy of the judg- 
ment delivered in a will case, which two brothers, men of 
high rank, are fighting against each other, and Oscar allowed 
himself to be circumvented. The master was furious. It was 
all I could do to set things straight by going at six this morn- 
ing to find the copying-clerk, and I made him promise to let 
me have the judgment in black and white by seven to-morrow 
morning.” 

“Oh, Godeschal,” cried Oscar, going up to his superior 
and grasping his hand, “ you are a true friend ! ” 

“Yes, monsieur,” said Madame Clapart, “it is a happy 
thing for a mother to feel that her son has such a friend as 
you, and you may believe that my gratitude will end only with 
my life. Oscar, beware of this Georges Marest ; he has al- 
ready been the cause of your first misfortune in life.” 

“ How was that ? ” asked Godeschal. 

The too-confiding mother briefly told the head-clerk the 
story of poor Oscar’s adventure in Pierrotin’s chaise. 

“And I am certain,” added Godeschal, “that the humbug 
has planned some trick on us this evening. I shall not go to 
the Marquise de las Florentinas. My sister needs my help in 
drawing up a fresh engagement, so I shall leave you at dessert. 
But be on your guard, Oscar. Perhaps they will make you 
gamble, and Desroches’ office must not make a poor mouth. 
Here, you can stake for us both ; here are a hundred francs,” 
said the kind fellow, giving the money to Oscar, whose purse 
had been drained by the tailor and bootmaker. “ Be careful; 
do not dream of playing beyond the hundred francs; do not 
let play or wine go to your head. By the mass ! even a 
second clerk has a position to respect ; he must not play on 
promissory-paper, nor overstep a due limit in anything. 
When a man is second clerk he must remember that he will 
presently be an attorney. So not to drink, not to play high, 
and to be moderate in all things, must be your rule of con- 


358 


A START IN LIFE. 


duct. Above all, be in by midnight, for you must be at the 
Courts by seven to fetch away the copy of that judgment. 
There is no law against some fun, but business holds the first 
place. ’ * 

“Do you hear, Oscar?” said Madame Clapart. “And 
see how indulgent Monsieur Godeschal is, and how he com- 
bines the enjoyments of youth with the demands of duty.” 

Madame Clapart, seeing the tailor and bootmaker waiting 
for Oscar, remained behind a moment with Godeschal to re- 
turn the hundred francs he had just lent the boy. 

“A mother’s blessing be on you, monsieur, and on all you 
do,” said she. 

The mother had the supreme delight of seeing her boy well 
dressed ; she had bought him a gold watch, purchased out of 
her savings, as a reward for his good conduct. 

“You are on the list for the conscription next week,” said 
she, “and as it was necessary to be prepared in case your 
number should be drawn, I went to see your Uncle Cardot; he 
is delighted at you being so high up at the age of twenty, and 
at your success in the examinations at the law-schools, so he 
has promised to find the money for a substitute. Do you not 
yourself feel some satisfaction in finding good conduct so well 
rewarded ? If you still have to put up with some privations, 
think of the joy of being able to purchase a connection in only 
five years ! And remember, too, dear boy, how happy you 
make your mother.” 

Oscar’s face, thinned down a little by hard study, had de- 
veloped into a countenance to which habits of business had 
given a look of gravity. He had done growing and had a 
beard; in short, from a boy he had become a man. His 
mother could not but admire him, and she kissed him fondly, 
saying — 

“Yes, enjoy yourself, but remember Monsieur Godeschal’s 
advice. By the way, I was forgetting : here is a present from 
our friend Moreau — a pocketbook.” 


A START IN LIFE. 


359 


“ The very thing I want, for the chief gave me five hundred 
francs to pay for that confounded judgment in Vandenesse, 
and I did not want to leave them in my room.” 

“Are you carrying the money about with you?” said his 
mother in alarm. “Supposing you were to lose such a sum 
of money ! Would you not do better to leave it with Mon- 
sieur Godeschal?” 

“ Godeschal ! ” cried Oscar, thinking his mother’s idea 
admirable. 

But Godeschal, like all clerks on Sunday, had his day to 
himself from ten o’clock, and was already gone. 

When his mother had left, Oscar went out to lounge on the 
boulevards till it was time for the breakfast. How could he 
help airing those resplendent clothes, that he wore with such 
pride, and the satisfaction that every man will understand who 
began life in narrow circumstances. A neat, double-breasted, 
blue cashmere vest, black kerseymere trousers made with 
pleats, a well-fitting black coat, and a cane with a silver-gilt 
knob, bought out of his little savings, were the occasion of 
very natural pleasure to the poor boy, who remembered the 
clothes he had worn on the occasion of that journey to Presles, 
and the effect produced on his mind by Georges. 

Oscar looked forward to a day of perfect bliss ; he was to 
see the world of fashion for the first time that evening ! And 
it must be admitted that to a lawyer’s clerk starved of pleasure, 
who had for long been craving for a debauch, the sudden play 
of the senses was enough to obliterate the wise counsels of 
Godeschal and his mother. To the shame of the young be it 
said, good advice and warnings are never to seek. Apart 
from the morning’s lecture, Oscar felt an instinctive dislike of 
Georges ; he was humiliated in the presence of a man who had 
witnessed the scene in the drawing-room at Presles, when 
Moreau had dragged him to the count’s feet. 

The moral sphere has its laws ; and we are always punished 


360 


A START IN' LIFE. 


if we ignore them. One, especially, the very beasts obey in- 
variably and without delay. It is that which bids us fly from 
any one who has once injured us, voluntarily or involuntarily, 
intentionally or not. The being who has brought woe or dis- 
comfort on us is always odious. Whatever his rank, however 
near be the ties of affection, we must part. He is the emissary 
of our evil genius. Though Christian theory is opposed to 
such conduct, obedience to this inexorable law is essentially 
social and preservative. James II.’s daughter,* who sat on her 
father’s throne, must have inflicted more than one wound on 
him before her usurpation. Judas must certainly have given 
Jesus some mortal thrust or ever he betrayed Him. There is 
within us a second-sight, a mind’s eye, which foresees dis- 
asters ; and the repugnance we feel to the fateful being is the 
consequence of this prophetic sense. Though religion may 
command us to resist it, distrust remains and its voice should 
be listened to. 

Could Oscar, at the age of twenty, be so prudent ? Alas ! 
When, at two o’clock, Oscar went into the room of the 
Rocher de Cancale, where he found three guests beside his 
fellow-clerks — to wit, an old dragoon captain named Girou- 
deau; Finot, a journalist who might enable Florentine to get 
an engagement at the opera; and du Bruel, an author and 
friend of Tullia’s, one of Mariette’s rivals at the opera — the 
junior felt his hostility melt away under the first hand-shaking, 
the first flow of talk among young men, as they sat at a table 
handsomely laid for twelve. And indeed Georges was charm- 
ing to Oscar. 

“You are,” said he, “following a diplomatic career, but 
in private concerns ; for what is the difference between an 
ambassador and an attorney? Merely that which divides a 
nation from an individual. Ambassadors are the attorneys of 
a people. If I can ever be of any use to you, depend on 
me.” 


* Mary II., Queen of England. 


A START IN LIFE. 


361 


“ My word ! I may tell you now,” said Oscar, “you were 
the cause of a terrible catastrophe for me.” 

“Pooh ! ” said Georges, after listening to the history of the 
lad’s tribulations. “ It was Monsieur de Serizy who behaved 
badly. His wife ? I would not have her at a gift. And 
although the count is a minister of State and peer of France, I 
would not be in his red skin ! He is a small-minded man, and 
I can afford to despise him now.” 

Oscar listened with pleasure to Georges’ ironies on the 
Comte de Serizy, for they seemed to diminish the gravity 
of his own fault, and he threw himself into the young man’s 
spirit as he predicted that overthrow of the nobility of which 
the citizen class then had visions, to be realized in 1830. 

They sat down at half-past three ; dessert was not on the 
table before eight. Each course of dishes lasted two hours. 
None but law-clerks can eat so steadily ! Digestions of eigh- 
teen and twenty are inexplicable to the medical faculty. The 
wine was worthy of Borrel, who had at that time succeeded 
the illustrious Balaine, the creator of the very best restaurant 
in Paris — and that is to say in the world — for refined and per- 
fect cookery. 

A full report of this Belshazzar’s feast was drawn up at 
dessert, beginning with — Inter pocula aurea restaur anti, qui 
vulgo dicitur Rapes Cancaiia : and from this introduction the 
rapturous record may be imagined which was added to this 
Golden Book of the High Festivals of the Law. 

Godeschal disappeared after signing his name, leaving the 
eleven feasters, prompted by the old captain of the Imperial 
Dragoons, to devote themselves to the wine, the liqueurs, and 
the toasts, over a dessert of pyramids of sweets and fruits like 
those of Thebes. By half-past ten the “boy” of the office 
was in a state which necessitated his removal ; Georges packed 
him into a cab, gave the driver his mother’s address, and paid 
his fare. Then the ten remaining guests, as drunk as Pitt and 
Dundas, talked of going on foot by the boulevards, the 


362 


A START IN LIFE. 


night being very fine, as far as the residence of the marquise, 
where, at a little before midnight, they would find a brilliant 
company. The whole party longed to fill their lungs with 
fresh air; but excepting Georges, Giroudeau, Finot, and du 
Bruel, all accustomed to Parisian orgies, no one could walk. 
So Georges sent for three open carriages from a livery-stable, 
and took the whole party for an airing on the outer boulevards 
for an hour, from Montmartre to the Barriere du Trone, and 
back by Bercy, the quays, and the boulevards to the Rue de 
Vendbme. 

The youngsters were still floating in the paradise of fancy 
to which intoxication transports boys, when their entertainer 
led them into Florentine’s rooms. Here sat a dazzling 
assembly of the queens of the stage, who, at a hint, no doubt, 
from Frederic, amused themselves by aping the manners of 
fine ladies. Ices were handed round, the chandeliers blazed 
with wax-lights. Tullia’s footman, with those of Madame du 
Val-Noble and Florine, all in gaudy livery, carried round 
sweetmeats on silver trays. The hangings, choice products 
of the looms of Lyons, and looped with gold cord, dazzled the 
eye. The flowers of the carpet suggested a garden-bed. 
Costly toys and curiosities glittered on all sides. At first, and 
in the obfuscated state to which Georges had brought them, 
the clerks, and Oscar in particular, believed in the genuine- 
ness of the Marquesa de las Florentinas y Cabirolos. 

On four tables set out for play gold-pieces lay in glittering 
heaps. In the drawing-room the women were playing at 
Vingt-et-un, Nathan, the famous author, holding the deal. 
Thus, after being carried tipsy and half-asleep along the 
dimly-lighted boulevards, the clerks woke to find themselves 
in Armida’s Palace. Oscar, on being introduced by Georges 
to the sham marquise, stood dumfounded, not recognizing 
the ballet-dancer from the Gait6 in an elegant dress cut aristo- 
cratically low at the neck and richly trimmed with lace — a 
woman looking like a vignette in a keepsake, who received 


A STAR T IN LIFE. 


363 


them with an air and manner that had no parallel in the ex- 
perience or the imagination of a youth so strictly bred as he 
had been. After he had admired all the splendor of the 
rooms, the beautiful women who displayed themselves and who 
had vied with each other in dress for this occasion — the in- 
auguration of all this magnificence — Florentine took Oscar 
by the hand and led him to the table where Vingt-et-un was 
going on. 

“ Come, let me introduce you to the handsome Marquise 
d’Anglade, one of my friends ” 

And she took the hapless Oscar up to pretty Fanny BeauprS, 
who, for the last two years, had filled poor Coralie’s place in 
Camusot’s affections. The young actress had just achieved a 
reputation in the part of a marquise in a melodrama at the 
Porte-Sainte-Martin, called the Famille d’Anglade, one of the 
successes of the day. 

“Here, my dear,” said Florentine, “allow me to introduce 
to you a charming youth who can be your partner in the 
game.” 

“Oh! that will be very nice?” replied the actress, with 
a fascinating smile, as she looked Oscar down from head to 
foot. “Iam losing. We will go shares, if you like.” 

“I am at your orders, Madame la Marquise,” said Oscar, 
taking a seat by her side. 

“You shall stake,” said she, “ and I will play. You will 

bring me luck ! There, that is my last hundred francs ” 

And the sham marquise took out a purse of which the rings 
were studded with diamonds, and produced five gold-pieces. 
Oscar brought out his hundred francs in five-franc pieces, 
already shamefaced at mingling the ignoble silver cart-wheels 
with the gold coin. In ten rounds the actress had lost the 
two hundred francs. 

“Come! this is stupid!” she exclaimed. “I will take 
the bank. We will still be partners ? ” she asked of Oscar. 

Fanny Beaupre rose, and the lad, who, like her, was now 


364 


A START IN LIFE. 


the centre of attention to the whole table, dared not with* 
draw, saying that the devil alone was lodged in his purse. 
He was speechless, his tongue felt heavy and stuck to his 
palate. 

“Lend me five hundred francs,” said the actress to the 
dancer. 

Florentine brought her five hundred francs, which she bor- 
rowed of Georges, who had just won at ecarte eight times 
running. 

“Nathan has won twelve hundred francs,” said the actress 
to the clerk. “The dealer always wins; do not let us be 
made fools of,” she whispered in his ear. 

Every man of feeling, of imagination, of spirit, will under- 
stand that poor Oscar could not help opening his pocketbook 
and taking out the five-hundred-franc note. He looked at 
Nathan, the famous writer, who, in partnership with Florine, 
staked high against the dealer. 

“Now then, boy, sweep it in!” cried Fanny Beaupre, 
signing to Oscar to take up two hundred francs that Florine 
and Nathan had lost. 

The actress did not spare the losers her banter and jests. 
She enlivened the game by remarks of a character which 
Oscar thought strange; but delight stifled these reflections, for 
the two first deals brought in winnings of two thousand francs. 
Oscar longed to be suddenly taken ill and to fly, leaving 
his partner to her fate, but honor forbade it. Three more 
deals had carried away the profits. Oscar felt the cold sweat 
down his spine ; he was quite sobered now. The two last 
rounds absorbed a thousand francs staked by the partners; 
Oscar felt thirsty and drank off three glasses of iced punch. 

The actress led him into an adjoining room, talking non- 
sense to divert him; but the sense of his error so completely 
overwhelmed Oscar, to whom Desroches’ face appeared like a 
vision in a dream, that he sank on to a splendid ottoman in a 
dark corner and hid his face in his handkerchief. He was 


A START IN LIFE. 


365 


fairly crying. Florentine detected him in this attitude, too 
sincere not to strike an actress; she hurried up to Oscar, 
pulled away the handkerchief, and seeing his tears led him 
into a boudoir. 

“ What is the matter, my boy? ” said she. 

To this voice, these words, this tone, Oscar, recognizing 
the motherliness of a courtesan’s kindness, replied — 

“ I have lost five hundred francs that my master gave me 
to pay to-morrow morning for a judgment ; there is nothing 
for it but to throw myself into the river ; I am disgraced.” 

“How can you be so silly?” cried Florentine. “Stay 
where you are, I will bring you a thousand francs. Try to 
recover it all, but only risk five hundred francs, so as to keep 
your chief’s money. Georges plays a first-rate game at 
ecarte ; bet on him.” 

Oscar, in his dreadful position, accepted the offer of the 
mistress of the house. 

“ Ah ! ” thought he, “ none but a marquise would be capa- 
ble of such an action. Beautiful, noble, and immensely rich ! 
Georges is a lucky dog ! ” 

He received a thousand francs in gold from the hands of 
Florentine, and went to bet on the man who had played him 
this trick. The punters were pleased at the arrival of a new 
man, for they all, with the instinct of gamblers, went over to 
the side of Giroudeau, the old Imperial officer. 

“Gentlemen,” said Georges, “you will be punished for 
your defection, for I am in luck. Come, Oscar ; we will do 
for them.” 

But Georges and his backer lost five games running. Hav- 
ing thrown away his thousand francs, Oscar, carried away by 
the gambling fever, insisted on holding the cards. As a 
result of the luck that often favors a beginner, he won ; but 
Georges puzzled him with advice ; he told him how to discard, 
and frequently snatched his hand from him, so that the con- 
flict of two wills, two minds, spoiled the run of luck. In 


366 


A START IN LIFE . 


short, by three in the morning, after many turns of fortune, 
and unhoped-for recoveries, still drinking punch, Oscar found 
himself possessed of no more than a hundred francs. He rose 
from the table, his brain heavy and dizzy, walked a few steps, 
and dropped on to a sofa in the boudoir, his eyes sealed in 
leaden slumbers. 

“ Mariette,” said Fanny BeauprS to Godeschal’s sister, 
who had come in at about two in the morning, “ will you dine 
here to-morrow? My Camusot will be here and Father Car- 
dot; we will make them mad.” 

“ How? ” cried Florentine. “My old man has not sent 
me word.” 

“ He will be here this morning to tell you that he proposes 
to sing ‘ la Mere Godichon,’ ” replied Fanny Beaupre. “ He 
must give a house-warming too, poor man.” 

“ The devil take him and his orgies ! ” exclaimed Floren- 
tine. “ He and his son-in-law are worse than magistrates or 
managers. After all, Mariette, you dine well here,” she went 
on. “ Cardot orders everything from Chevet. Bring your 
Due de Maufrigneuse ; we will have fun, and make them all 
dance.” 

Oscar, who caught the names of Cardot and Camusot, made 
an effort to rouse himself ; but he could only mutter a word 
or two which were not heard, and fell back on the silk 
cushion. 

“You are provided, I see,” said Fanny Beaupr6 to Floren- 
tine, with a laugh. 

“Ah ! poor boy, he is drunk with punch and despair. He 
has lost some money his master had intrusted to him for some 
office business. He was going to kill himself, so I lent him a 
thousand francs, of which those robbers Finot and Giroudeau 
have fleeced him. Poor innocent ! ” 

“But we must wake him,” said Mariette. “ My brother 
will stand no nonsense, nor his master either.” 

“Well, wake him if you can, and get him away,” said 


A START IN LIFE. 


367 


Florentine, going back into the drawing-room to take leave of 
those who were not gone. 

The party then took to dancing — character dances, as they 
were called ; and at daybreak Florentine went to bed very 
tired, having forgotten Oscar, whom nobody, in fact, remem- 
bered, and who was still sleeping soundly. 

At about eleven o’clock a terrible sound awoke the lad, who 
recognized his Uncle Cardot’s voice, and thought he might 
get out of the scrape by pretending still to be asleep, so he 
hid his face in the handsome, yellow velvet cushions on which 
he had passed the night. 

“ Really, my little Florentine,” the old man was saying, 
“ it is neither good nor nice of you. You were dancing last 
night in the Ruines, and then spent the night in an orgy. 
Why, it is simply destruction to your freshness, not to say 
that it is really ungrateful of you to inaugurate this splendid 
apartment without me, with strangers, without my knowing it 
— who knows what may have happened ! ” 

“ You old monster ! ” cried Florentine. “ Have you not a 
key to come in whenever you like ? We danced till half-past 
five, and you are so cruel as to wake me at eleven.” 

“ Half- past eleven, Titine,” said the old man humbly. “ I 
got up early to order a dinner from Chevet worthy of an 
archbishop. How they have spoilt the carpets ! Whom had 
you here? ” 

“You ought to make no complaints, for Fanny Beaupr6 
told me that you and Camusot were coming, so I have asked 
the others to meet you — Tullia, du Bruel, Mariette, the Due 
de Maufrigneuse, Florine, and Nathan. So you will have 
the five loveliest women who ever stood behind the footlights, 
and we will dance you a pas de Zephire .” 

“ It is killing work to lead such a life ! ” cried old Cardot. 
“What a heap of broken glasses, what destruction! The 
anteroom is a scene of horror ! ” 

At this moment the amiable old man stood speechless and 


368 


A START IN LIFE. 


fascinated, like a bird under the gaze of a reptile. He caught 
sight of the outline of a young figure clothed in black cloth. 

“ Heyday ! Mademoiselle Cabirolle ! ” said he at last. 

“Well, what now?” said she. 

The girl’s eyes followed the direction of Pere Cardot’s 
gaze, and when She saw the youth still there, she burst into a 
fit of crazy laughter, which not only struck the old man dumb, 
but compelled Oscar to look round. Florentine pulled him 
up by the arm, and half choked with laughter as she saw the 
hang-dog look of the uncle and nephew. 

“ You here, nephew? ” 

“ Oh ho! He is your nephew?” cried Florentine, laugh- 
ing more than ever. “You never mentioned this nephew of 
yours. Then Mariette did not take you home? ” said she to 
Oscar, who sat petrified. “ What is to become of the poor 
boy?” 

“Whatever he pleases!” replied old Cardot drily and 
turning to the door to go away. 

“ One minute, Papa Cardot; you will have to help your 
nephew out of the mess he has gotten into by my fault, for he 
has gambled away his master’s money, five hundred francs, be- 
side a thousand francs of mine which I lent him to get it 
back again.” 

“ Wretched boy, have you lost fifteen hundred francs at 
play — at your age ? ’ ’ 

“Oh! uncle, uncle!” cried the unhappy Oscar, cast bv 
these words into the depths of horror at his position. He fell 
on his knees at his uncle’s feet with clasped hands. “ It is 
twelve o’clock ; I am lost, disgraced. Monsieur Desroches 
will show no mercy — there was an important business, a matter 
on which he prides himself— I was to have gone this morning 
to fetch away the copy of the judgment in Vandenesse v. Van- 
denesse ! What has happened ? What will become of me ? 
Save me for my father’s sake — for my aunt’s. Come with me 
to Maitre Desroches and explain ; find some excuse ” 


A START IN LIFE . 


369 


The words came out in gasps, between sobs and tears that 
might have softened the Sphinx in the desert of Luxor. 

“Now, old skinflint,” cried the dancer in tears, “can you 
leave your own nephew to disgrace, the son of the man to 
whom you owe your fortune, since he is Oscar Husson ? 
Save him, I say, or Titine refuses to own you as her milord ! ” 

“ But how came he here? ” asked the old man. 

“ What ! so as to forget the hour when he should have gone 
the errand he speaks of? Don’t you see, he got drunk and 
dropped there, dead-tired and sleepy ? Georges and his cousin 
Frederic treated Desroches’ clerks yesterday at the Rocher de 
Cancale.” 

Cardot looked at her, still doubtful. 

“ Come, now, old baboon, if it were anything more should 
I not have hidden him more effectually? ” cried she. 

“Here, then, take the five hundred francs, you scamp!” 
said Cardot to his nephew. “ That is all you will ever have 
of me. Go and make matters up with your master if you can. 
I will repay the thousand francs mademoiselle lent you, but 
never let me hear your name again.” 

Oscar fled, not wishing to hear more ; but when he was in 
the street he did not know where to go. 

The chance which ruins men, and the chance that serves 
them, seemed to be playing against each other on equal terms 
for Oscar that dreadful morning ; but he was destined to fail 
with a master who, when he made up his mind, never 
changed it. 

Mariette, on returning home, horrified at what might befail 
her brother’s charge, wrote a line to Godeschal, inclosing a 
five-hundred-franc note, and telling her brother of Oscar s 
drunken bout and disasters. The good woman, ere she went 
to sleep, instructed her maid to take this letter to Desroches 
chambers before seven. Godeschal, on his part, waking at 
six, found no Oscar. He at once guessed what had happened. 

24 


370 


A START IN LIFE. 


He took five hundred francs out of his savings and hurried off 
to the copying-clerk to fetch the judgment, so as to lay it 
before Desroches for signature in his office at eight. Des- 
roches, who always rose at four, came to his room at seven 
o’clock. Mariette’s maid, not finding her mistress’ brother 
in his attic, went down to the office and was there met by 
Desroches, to whom she very naturally gave the note. 

“Is it a matter of business?” asked the lawyer. “I am 
Mattre Desroches.” 

“You can see, monsieur,” said the woman. 

Desroches opened the letter and read it. On finding the 
five-hundred-franc note he went back into his own room, furi- 
ous with his second clerk. Then at half-past seven he heard 
Godeschal dictating a report on the judgment to another 
clerk, and a few minutes later Godeschal came into the room 
in triumph. 

“ Was it Oscar Husson who went to Simon this morning? ” 
asked Desroches. 

“Yes, monsieur,” replied Godeschal. 

“Who gave him the money?” said the lawyer. 

“You,” said Godeschal, “ on Saturday.” 

“ It rains five-hundred-franc notes, it would seem ! ” cried 
Desroches. “ Look here, Godeschal, you are a good fellow, 
but that little wretch Husson does not deserve your generosity. 
I hate a fool, but yet more I hate people who will go wrong 
in spite of the care of those who are kind to them.” He 
gave Godeschal Mariette’s note and the five hundred francs 
she had sent. “ Forgive me for opening it, but the maid 
said it was a matter of business. You must get rid of Oscar.” 

“ What trouble I have had with that poor little ne’er-do- 
well ! ” said Godeschal. “ That scoundrel Georges Marest 
is his evil genius ; he must avoid him like the plague, for I 
do not know what might happen if they met a third time.” 

“ How is that ? ” asked Desroches, and Godschal sketched 
the story of the practical joking on the journey to Presles. 


A START IN LIFE. 


371 


“To be sure,” said the lawyer. “I remember Joseph 
Bridau told me something about that at the tim.e. It was to 
that meeting that we owed the Comte de Serizy’s interest in 
Bridau’s brother.” 

At this moment Moreau came in, for this suit over the Van- 
denesse property was an important affair to him. The mar- 
quis wanted to sell the Vandenesse estate in lots, and his 
brother opposed such a proceeding. 

Thus the land agent was the recipient of the justifiable 
complaints and sinister prophecies fulminated by Desroches 
as against his second clerk ; and the unhappy boy’s most 
friendly protector was forced to the conclusion that Oscar’s 
vanity was incorrigible. 

“ Make a pleader of him,” said Desroches ; “ he only has 
to pass his final ; in that branch of the law his faults may 
prove to be useful qualities, for conceit spurs the tongue of 
half of our advocates.” 

As it happened, Clapart was at this time out of health, and 
nursed by his wife, a painful and thankless task. The man 
worried the poor soul, who had hitherto never known how 
odious the nagging and spiteful taunts can be in which a half- 
imbecile creature gives vent to his irritation when poverty 
drives him into a sort of cunning rage. Delighted to have a 
sharp dagger that he could drive home to her motherly heart, 
he had suspected the fears for the future which were suggested 
to the hapless woman by Oscar’s conduct and faults. In fact, 
when a mother has received such a blow as she had felt from 
the adventure at Presles she lives in perpetual alarm ; and by 
the way in which Madame Clapart cried up Oscar whenever 
he achieved a success, Clapart understood all her secret fears 
and would stir them up on the slightest pretext. 

“ Well, well, Oscar is getting on better than I expected of 
him ; I always said his journey to Presles was only a blunder 
due to inexperience. Where is the young man who never 
made a mistake? Poor, boy, he is heroic in his endurance 


372 


A START IN LIFE. 


of the privations he would never have known if his father 
had lived. God grant he may control his passions ! ” and so 
on. 

So, while so many disasters were crowding on each other 
in the Rue de Vendome and the Rue de Bethisy, Clapart, 
sitting by the fire wrapped in a shabby dressing-gown, was 
watching his wife, who was busy cooking over the bedroom 
fire some soup, Clapart’s herb tea, and her own breakfast. 

“ Good heavens ! I wish I knew how things fell out yester- 
day. Oscar was to breakfast at the Rocher de Cancale, and 
spend the evening with some marquise ” 

“Oh! don’t be in a hurry; sooner or later murder will 
out,” retorted her husband. “Do you believe in the mar- 
quise? Go on ; a boy who has his five senses and a love of 
extravagance — as Oscar has, after all — can find marquises on 
every bush costing their weight in gold ! He will come home 
some day loaded with debt ” 

“You don’t know how to be cruel enough, and to drive 
me to despair!” exclaimed Madame Clapart. “You com- 
plained that my son ate up all your salary, and he never cost 
you a sou. For two years you have not had a fault to find 
with Oscar, and now he is second clerk, his uncle and Mon- 
sieur Moreau provide him with everything, and he has eight 
hundred francs a year of his own earning. If we have bread 
in our old age, we shall owe it to that dear boy. You really 
are too unjust.” 

“You consider my foresight an injustice?” said the sick 
man sourly. 

There came at this moment a sharp ring at the bell. 
Madame Clapart ran to open the door, and then remained in 
the outer room, talking to Moreau, who had come himself to 
soften the blow that the news of Oscar’s levity must be to his 
poor mother. 

“What! He lost his master’s money?” cried Madame 
Clapart in tears. 


A START IN LIFE. 


373 


“Aha! what did I tell you?” said Clapart, who appeared 
like a spectre in the doorway of the drawing-room, to which 
he had shuffled across under the prompting of overweening 
curiosity. 

“But what is to be done with him?” said his wife, whose 
distress left her insensible to this stab. 

“Well, if he bore my name,” said Moreau, “I should 
calmly allow him to be drawn for the conscription, and if he 
should be called to serve, I would not pay for a substitute. 
This is the second time that sheer vanity has brought him into 
mischief. Well, vanity may lead him to some brilliant action, 
which will win him promotion as a soldier. Six years’ service 
will at any rate add a little weight to his feather-brain, and 
as he has only his final examination to pass, he will not do 
so badly if he finds himself a pleader at six-and-twenty, if he 
chooses to go to the bar after paying the blood-tax, as they 
say. This time, at any rate, he will have had his punishment, 
he will gain experience and acquire habits of subordination. 
He will have served his apprenticeship to life before serving 
it in the Law Courts.” 

“If that is the sentence you would pronounce on a son,” 
said Madame Clapart, “I see that a father’s heart is very 
unlike a mother’s. My poor Oscar — a soldier ? ” 

“ Would you rather see him jump head-foremost into the 
Seine after doing something to disgrace himself? He can never 
now be an attorney ; do you think he is fitted yet to be an 
advocate ? While waiting till he reaches years of discretion, 
what will he become? A thorough scamp; military disci- 
pline will at any rate preserve him from that.” 

“ Could he not go into another office? His Uncle Cardot 
would certainly pay for a substitute — and Oscar will dedicate 
his thesis to him- ” 

The clatter of a cab, in which was piled all Oscar’s personal; 
property, announced the wretched lad’s return, and in a few 
minutes he made his appearance. 


374 


A START IN LIFE. 


“So here you are, Master Joli-Coeur ! ”* exclaimed Cla- 
part. 

Oscar kissed his mother, and held out a hand to Monsieur 
Moreau, which that gentleman would not take. Oscar an- 
swered this contempt with a look to which reproach lent a 
firmness new to the bystanders. 

“Listen, Monsieur Clapart,” said the boy, so suddenly 
grown to be a man; “you worry my poor mother beyond 
endurance, and you have a right to do so ; she is your wife — 
for her sins. But it is different with me. In a few months I 
shall be of age, and you have no power over me even while I 
am a minor. I have never asked you for anything. Thanks 
to this gentleman, I have never cost you one sou, and I owe 
you no sort of gratitude ; so, have the goodness to leave me 
in peace.” 

Clapart, startled by this apostrophe, went back to his arm- 
chair by the fire. The reasoning of the lawyer’s clerk and 
the suppressed fury of a young man of twenty, who had just 
had a sharp lecture from his friend Godeschal, had reduced 
the sick man’s imbecility to silence, once and for all. 

“An error into which you would have been led quite as easily 
as I, at my age,” said Oscar to Moreau, “ made me commit a 
fault which Desroches thinks serious, but which is really trivial 
enough ; I am far more vexed with myself for having taken 
Florentine of the Gaite Theatre, for a marquise, and actresses 
for women of rank, than for having lost fifteen hundred francs 
at a little orgy where everybody, even Godeschal, was some- 
what screwed. This time, at any rate, I have hurt no one 
but myself. I am thoroughly cured. If you will help me, 
Monsieur Moreau, I swear to you that in the course of the 
six years during which I must remain a clerk before I can 
practice ” 

“Stop a bit ! ” said Moreau. “I have three children; I 
can make no promises.” 

* Pretty heart. 


A START IN LIFE. 


375 


“Well, well,” said Madame Clapart, with a reproachful 
look at Moreau, “ your Uncle Cardot ” 

“ No more an Uncle Cardot for me,” replied Oscar, and he 
related the adventure of the Rue de Vendome. 

Madame Clapart, feeling her knees give way under the 
weight of her body, dropped on one of the dining-room chairs 
as if a thunderbolt had fallen. 

“ Every possible misfortune at once ! ” said she, and fainted 
away. 

Moreau lifted the poor woman in his arms, and carried her 
to her bed. Oscar stood motionless and speechless. 

“There is nothing for you but to serve as a soldier,” said 
the estate agent, coming back again. “ That idiot Clapart 
will not last three months longer, it seems to me ; your mother 
will not have a sou in the world ; ought I not rather to keep 
for her the little money I can spare ? This was what I could 
not say to you in her presence. As a soldier, you will earn 
your bread, and you may meditate on what life is to the 
penniless.” 

“ I might draw a lucky number,” said Oscar. 

“And if you do? Your mother has been a very good 
mother to you. She gave you an education, she started you 
in a good way ; you have lost it ; what could you do now ? 
Without money, a man is helpless, as you now know, and you 
are not the man to begin all over again by pulling off your 
coat and putting on a workman’s or artisan’s blouse. And 
then your mother worships you. Do you want to kill her ? 
For she would die of seeing you fallen so low.” 

Oscar sat down, and could no longer control his tears, 
which flowed freely. He understood now a form of appeal 
which had been perfectly incomprehensible at the time of his 
first error. 

“ Penniless folk ought to be perfect ! ” said Moreau to him- 
self, not appreciating how deeply true this cruel verdict was. 

“My fate will soon be decided,” said Oscar; “the num- 


376 


A START IN LIFE. 


bers are drawn the day after to-morrow. Between this and 
then I will come to some decision.” 

Moreau, deeply grieved in spite of his austerity, left the 
family in the Rue de la Cerisaie to their despair. 

Three days after Oscar drew Number 27. To help the poor 
lad, the ex-steward of Presles found courage enough to go to 
the Comte de Serizy and beg his interest to get Oscar into the 
cavalry. As it happened, the count’s son, having come out 
well at his last examination on leaving the Polytechnic, had 
been passed by favor, with the rank of sub-lieutenant, into the 
cavalry regiment commanded by the Due de Maufrigneuse. 
And so, in the midst of his fall, Oscar had the small piece of 
luck of being enlisted in this fine regiment at the Comte de 
Serizy’s recommendation, with the promise of promotion to 
be quartermaster in a year’s time. 

Thus chance placed the lawyer’s clerk under the command 
of Monsieur de Serizy’s son. 

After some days of pining, Madame Clapart, who was 
deeply stricken by all these misfortunes, gave herself up to 
the remorse which is apt to come over mothers whose conduct 
has not been blameless, and who, as they grow old, are led to 
repent. She thought of herself as one accursed. She ascribed 
the miseries of her second marriage and all her son’s ill-for- 
tune to the vengeance of God, who was punishing her in ex- 
piation of the sins and pleasures of her youth. This idea soon 
became a conviction. The poor soul went to confession, for 
the first time in forty years, to the vicar of the church of 
Saint-Paul, the Abbe Gaudron, who plunged her into the 
practices of religion. 

But a spirit so crushed and so loving as Madame Clapart’s 
could not fail to become simply pious. The Aspasia of the 
Directoire yearned to atone for her sins that she might bring 
the blessing of God down on the head of her beloved Oscar, 
and before long she had given herself up to the most earnest 


A START IN LIFE. 


377 


practices of devotion and works of piety. She believed that 
she had earned the favor of heaven when she had succeeded 
in saving Monsieur Clapart, who, thanks to her care, lived to 
torment her ; but she persisted in seeing in the tyranny of 
this half-witted old man the trials inflicted by Him who loves 
while He chastens us. 

Oscar’s conduct meanwhile was so satisfactory that in 1830 
he was first quartermaster of the company under the Vicomte 
de Serizy, equivalent in rank to a sub-lieutenant of the line, 
as the Due de Maufrigneuse’s regiment was attached to the 
King’s Guards. Oscar Husson was now five-and-twenty. 
As the regiments of Guards were always quartered in Paris, 
or within thirty leagues of the capital, he could see his mother 
from time to time and confide his sorrows to her, for he was 
clear-sighted enough to perceive that he could never rise to 
be an officer. At that time cavalry officers were almost always 
chosen from among the younger sons of the nobility, and men 
without the distinguishing de got on but slowly. Oscar’s 
whole ambition was to get out of the Guards and enter some 
cavalry regiment of the line as a sub-lieutenant ; and in the 
month of February, 1830, Madame Clapart, through the in- 
terest of the Abbe Gaudron, now at the head of his parish, 
gained the favor of the Dauphiness, which secured Oscar’s 
promotion. 

Although the ambitious young soldier professed ardent de- 
votion to the Bourbons, he was at heart a liberal. In the 
struggle, in 1830, he took the side of the people. This de- 
fection, which proved to be important by reason of the way in 
which it acted, drew public attention to Oscar Husson. In 
the moment of triumph, in the month of August, Oscar, pro- 
moted to be lieutenant, received the cross of the Legion of 
Honor, and succeeded in obtaining the post of aide-de-camp 
to La Fayette, who made him captain in 1832. When this de- 
votee to “ the best of all Republics” was deprived of his 
command of the National Guard, Oscar Husson, whose devo- 

N 


378 


A START IN LIFE. 


tion to the new royal family was almost fanaticism, was sent 
as major with a regiment to Africa on the occasion of the first 
expedition undertaken by the prince. The Vicomte de 
Serizy was now lieutenant-colonel of that regiment. At the 
fight of the Macta, where the Arabs remained masters of the 
field, Monsieur de Serizy was left wounded under his dead 
horse. Oscar addressed his company. 

“ It is. riding to our death,” said he, “but we cannot desert 
our colonel.” 

He was the first to charge the enemy, and his men, quite 
electrified, followed. The Arabs, in the shock of surprise at 
this furious and unexpected attack, allowed Oscar to pick up 
his colonel, whom he took on his horse and rode off at a 
pelting gallop, though in this act, carried out in the midst 
of furious fighting, he had two cuts from a yataghan on the 
left arm. 

Oscar’s valiant conduct was rewarded by the cross of an 
officer of the Legion of Honor, and promotion to the rank 
of lieutenant-colonel. He nursed the Vicomte de Serizy with 
devoted affection ; the Comtesse de Serizy joined her son and 
carried him to Toulon, where, as all the world knows, he 
died of his wounds. Madame de Serizy did not part her 
son from the man who, after rescuing him from the Arabs, 
had cared for him with such unfailing devotion. 

Oscar himself was so severely wounded that the surgeons 
called in by the countess to attend her son pronounced ampu- 
tation necessary. The count forgave Oscar his follies on the 
occasion of the journey to Presles, and even regarded him- 
self as the young man’s debtor when he had buried his only 
surviving son in the chapel of the Chateau de Serizy. 

A long time after the battle of the Macta, an old lady 
dressed in black, leaning on the arm of a man of thirty-four, 
at once recognizable as a retired officer by the loss of one arm 
and the rosette of the Legion of Honor at his button-hole, 


A START IN LIFE. 


379 


was to be seen at eight o’clock one morning, waiting under 
the gateway of the Silver Lion, Rue du Faubourg, Saint- 
Denis, till the diligence should be ready to start. 

Pierrotin, the manager of the coach services of the Valley 
of the Oise, passing by Saint-Leu-Taverny and l’lsle-Adam, 
as far as Beaumont, would hardly have recognized in this 
bronzed officer that little Oscar Husson whom he had once 
driven to Presles. Madame Clapart, a widow at last, was 
quite as unrecognizable as her son. Clapart, one of the vic- 
tims of Fieschi’s machine, had done his wife a better turn 
by the manner of his death than he had ever done her in 
his life. Of course, Clapart, the idler, the lounger, had 
taken up a place on his boulevard to see his legion re- 
viewed. Tlius the poor bigot had found her name put down 
by the government for a pension of fifteen hundred francs a 
year by the decree which indemnified the victims of this in- 
fernal machine. . 

The vehicle, to which four dappled-gray horses were now 
being harnessed — steeds worthy of the Messageries royales — 
was in four divisions, the coupe , the interieur , the rotonde be- 
hind, and the imperiale at top. It was identically the same 
as the diligences called Gondoles , which, in our day, still 
maintain a rivalry on the Versailles road with two lines of rail- 
way. Strong and light, well painted and clean, lined with 
good blue cloth, furnished with blinds of arabesque design and 
red morocco cushions, the Hirondelle de /’ Oise (Swallow of 
the Oise) could carry nineteen travelers. Pierrotin, though 
he was by this time fifty-six, was little changed. He still 
wore a blouse over his black coat, and still smoked his short 
pipe, as he watched two porters in stable-livery piling numerous 
packages on the roof of his coach. 

“Have you taken seats?” he asked of Madame Clapart 
and Oscar, looking at them as if he were searching his mem- 
ory for some association of ideas. 

“Yes, two inside places, name of Bellejambe, my servant,” 


380 


A START IN LIFE. 


said Oscar. “ He was to take them when he left the house 
last evening.” 

“Oh, then monsieur is the new collector at Beaumont,” 
said Pierrotin. “ You are going down to take the place of 
Monsieur Margueron’s nephew?” 

“Yes,” replied Oscar, pressing his mother’s arm as a hint 
to her to say nothing. For now he in his turn wished to re- 
main unknown for a time. 

At this instant Oscar was startled by recognizing Georges’ 
voice calling from the street — 

“ Have you a seat left, Pierrotin ? ” 

“ It strikes me that you might say Monsieur Pierrotin with- 
out breaking your jaw,” said the coach-owner angrily. 

But for the tone of his voice Oscar could never have recog- 
nized the practical joker who had twice brought him such ill- 
luck. Georges, almost bald, had but three or four locks of 
hair left above his ears, and carefully combed up to disguise 
his bald crown as far as possible. A development of fat in 
the wrong place, a bulbous stomach, had spoiled the elegant 
figure of the once handsome young man. Almost vulgar in 
shape and mien, Georges showed the traces of disaster in love, 
and of a life of constant debauchery, in a spotty red com- 
plexion, and thickened, vinous features. His eyes had lost 
the sparkle and eagerness of youth, which can only be pre- 
served by decorous and studious habits. 

Georges, dressed with evident indifference to his appearance, 
wore a pair of trousers with straps, but shabby, and of a style 
that demanded patent-leather shoes; those he wore, thick and 
badly polished, were at least three-quarters of a year old, 
which is in Paris as much as three years anywhere else. A 
shabby vest, a tie elaborately knotted, though it was but an 
old bandana, betrayed the covert penury to which a decayed 
dandy may be reduced. To crown all, at this early hour of 
the day Georges wore a dress-coat instead of a morning-coat, 
the symptom of positive poverty. This coat, which musi; 


A STAkT IN LIFE. 


381 


have danced at many a ball, had fallen, like its owner, from 
the opulence it once represented to the duties of daily scrub. 
The seams of the black cloth showed white ridges, the collar 
was greasy, and wear had pinked out the cuffs into a dog- 
tooth edge. Still, Georges was bold enough to invite attention 
by wearing lemon-colored gloves — rather dirty, to be sure, 
and on one finger the outline of a large ring was visible in 
black. 

Round his tie, of which the ends were slipped through a 
pretentious gold ring, twined a brown silk chain in imitation 
of hair, ending no doubt in a watch. His hat, though stuck 
on with an air, showed more evidently than all these other 
symptoms the poverty of a man who never has sixteen francs 
to spend at the hatter’s when he lives from hand to mouth. 
Florentine’s lover of yore flourished a cane with a chased 
handle, silver-gilt, but horribly dented. His blue trousers, 
tartan waistcoat, sky-blue tie, and red-striped cotton shirt 
bore witness, in spite of so much squalor, to such a passion 
for show that the contrast was not merely laughable, but a 
lesson. 

“And this is Georges?” said Oscar to himself. “A man I 
left in possession of thirty thousand francs a year ! ” 

“ Has Monsieur de Pierrotin still a vacant seat in his 
coupe?” asked Georges ironically. 

“No, my coupe is taken by a peer of France, Monsieur 
Moreau’s son-in-law, Monsieur le Baron de Canalis, with his 
wife and his mother-in-law. I have only a seat in the body 
of the coach.” 

“ The deuce ! It would seem that under every form of 
government peers of France travel in Pierrotin’s conveyances ! 
I will take the seat in the intericur ,” said Georges, with a 
reminiscence of the journey with Monsieur de Serizy. 

He turned to stare at Oscar and the widow, but recognized 
neither mother nor son. Oscar was deeply tanned by the 
African sun ; he had a very thick mustache and whiskers ; his 


A START IN LIFE. 


282 

hollow cheeks and marked features were in harmony with his 
military deportment. The officer’s rosette, the loss of an 
arm, the plain dark dress, would all have been enough to mis- 
lead Georges’ memory, if indeed he remembered his former 
victim. As to Madame Clapart, whom he had scarcely seen 
on the former occasion, ten years spent in pious exercises of 
the severest kind had absolutely transformed her. No one 
could have imagined that this sort of Gray Sister hid one of 
the Aspasias of 1797. 

A huge old man, plainly but very comfortably dressed, in 
whom Oscar recognized old Leger, came up slowly and heavily; 
he nodded familiarly to Pierrotin, who seemed to regard him 
with the respect due in all countries to millionaires. 

“ Heh ! why, it is Father Leger ! more ponderous than 
ever! ” cried Georges. 

“Whom have I the honor of addressing?” asked the 
farmer very drily. 

“What! Don’t you remember Colonel Georges, Ali 
Pasha’s friend ? We traveled this road together, once upon a 
time, with the Comte de Serizy, who preserved his in- 
cognito.” 

One of the commonest follies of persons who have come 
down in the world is insisting on recognizing people, and on 
being recognized. 

“ You are very much changed,” said the old farmer, now 
worth two millions of francs. 

“Everything changes,” said Georges. “Look at the 
Silver Lion inn and at Pierrotin’s coach, and see if they are 
the same as they were fourteen years since.” 

“ Pierrotin is now owner of all the coaches that serve the 
Oise Valley, and has very good vehicles,” said M. Leger. 
“ He is a citizen now of Beaumont, and keeps a hotel there 
where his coaches put up ; he has a wife and daughter who 
know their business ” 

An old man of about seventy came out of the inn and 


A START IN LIFE. 


383 


joined the group of travelers who were waiting to be told to 
get in. 

“Come along, Papa Reybert ! ” said Leger. “We have 
no one to wait for now but your great man.” 

“Here he is,” said the land steward of Presles, turning to 
Joseph Bridau. 

Neither Oscar nor Georges would have recognized the 
famous painter, for his face was the strangely worn counte- 
nance now so well known, and his manner was marked by the 
confidence born of success. His black overcoat displayed 
the ribbon of the Legion of Honor. His dress, which was 
careful in all points, showed that he was on his way to some 
country fSte. 

At this moment a clerk with a paper in his hand bustled 
out of an office constructed at one end of the old kitchen of 
the Silver Lion, and stood in front of the still unoccupied 
coupe. 

“Monsieur and Madame de Canalis, three places!” he 
called out; then, coming to the interieur , he said, “Mon- 
sieur Bellejambe, two places ; Monsieur Reybert, three ; 
Monsieur — your name ? ” added he to Georges. 

“ Georges Marest,” replied the fallen hero in an under- 
tone. 

The clerk then went to the rotonde (the omnibus at the back 
of the old French diligence), round which stood a little crowd 
of nurses, country-folk, and small storekeepers, taking leave 
of each other. After packing the six travelers, the clerk 
called the names of four youths who clambered up on to the 
seat on the imperiale , and then said “ Right behind ! ” as the 
signal for starting. 

Pierrotin took his place by the driver, a young man in a 
blouse, who in his turn said, “ Get up,” to his horses. 

The coach, set in motion by four horses purchased at Rove, 
was pulled up the hill of the Faubourg Saint-Denis at a 
gentle trot, but having once gained the level above Saint Lau- 


m 


A START IN LIFE. 


rent, it spun along like a mail-coach as far as Saint-Denis in 
forty minutes. They did not stop at the inn famous for 
cheese-cakes, but turned off to the left of Saint-Denis, down 
the valley of Montmorency. 

It was here, as they turned, that Georges broke the silence 
which had been kept so far by the travelers who were study- 
ing each other. 

“ We keep rather better time than we did fifteen years ago,” 
said he, taking out a silver watch. “ Eh ! Father Leger? ” 
he asked. 

“ People are so condescending as to address me as Monsieur 
Leger,” retorted the millionaire. 

“ Why, this is our blusterer of my first journey to Presles,” 
exclaimed Joseph Bridau. “Well, and have you been fight- 
ing new campaigns in Asia, Africa, and America? ” asked the 
great painter. 

“ By Jupiter ! I helped in the Revolution of July, and that 
was enough, for it ruined me.” 

“Oho! you helped in the Revolution of July, did you? ” 
said Bridau. “Iam not surprised, for I never could believe 
what I was told, that it made itself.” 

“ How strangely meetings come about,” said Monsieur 
Leger, turning to Reybert. “ Here, Papa Reybert, you see 
the notary’s clerk to whom you owe indirectly your place as 
steward of the estates of Serizy.” 

“ But we miss Mistigris, now so famous as Leon de Lora,” 
said Joseph Bridau, “ and the little fellow who was such a 
fool as to tell the count all about his skin complaints — which 
he has cured at last — and his wife, from whom he has parted to 
die in peace.” 

“ Monsieur le Comte is missing too,” said Reybert. 

“ Oh ! ” said Bridau sadly, “ I am afraid that the last ex- 
pedition he will ever make will be to l’lsle-Adam, to be pres- 
ent at my wedding.” 

“He still drives out in the park,” remarked old Reybert, 


A START IN LIFE. 


385 


“ Does his wife come often to see him ? ” asked Leger. 

“ Once a month,” replied old Reybert. “She still pre- 
fers Paris ; she arranged the marriage of her favorite niece, 
Mademoiselle du Rouvre, to a very rich young Pole, Count 
Laginski, in September last ” 

“And who will inherit Monsieur de Sdrizy’s property?” 
asked Madame Clapart. 

“His wife. She will bury him,” replied Georges. “The 
countess is still handsome for a woman of fifty-four, still very 
elegant, and at a distance quite illusory ” 

“ Elusive, you mean? She will always elude you,” Leger 
put in, wishing, perhaps, to turn the tables on the man who 
had mystified him. 

“ I respect her,” said Georges in reply. “ But, by the way, 
what became of that steward who was so abruptly dismissed in 
those days? ” 

“Moreau?” said Leger. “He is Deputy now for Seine 
et Oise.” 

“Oh, yes, the famous centre Moreau (of l’Oise)?”* said 
Georges. 

“Yes,” replied Leger. “ Monsieur Moreau (of l’Oise). 
He helped rather more than you in the Revolution of July, 
and he has lately bought the splendid estate of Pointel, be- 
tween Presles and Beaumont.” 

“ What, close to the place he managed, and so near his old 
master ! That is in very bad taste,” cried Georges. 

“Do not talk so loud,” said Monsieur de Reybert, “for 
Madame Moreau and her daughter, the Baroness de Canalis, 
and her son-in-law, the late minister, are in the coupe .” 

“ What fortune did he give her that the great orator would 
marry his daughter?” 

“Well, somewhere about two millions,” said L6ger. 

“ He had a pretty taste in millions,” said Georges, smiling, 

* Moreau (pronounced mo-rO) means extremely well — the play is on 
the centre O in “ of l’Oise.” 

25 


386 


A START IN LIFE . 


and in an undertone, ‘‘He began feathering his nest at 
Presles ’ ’ 

“ Say no more about Monsieur Moreau/’ exclaimed Oscar. 
“ It seems to me that you might have learned to hold your 
tongue in a public conveyance ! ” 

Joseph Bridau looked for a few seconds at the one-armed 
officer, and then said — 

“ Monsieur is not an ambassador, but his rosette shows that 
he has risen in the world ; and nobly too, for my brother and 
General Giroudeau have often mentioned you in their dis- 
patches ’ ’ 

“Oscar Husson ! ” exclaimed Georges Marest. “On my 
honor, but for your voice, I certainly should never have rec- 
ognized you.” 

“Ah ! is this the gentleman who so bravely carried off the 
Vicomte Jules de Serizy from the Arabs?” asked Reybert, 
“and to whom Monsieur le Comte has given the collectorship 
at Beaumont pending his appointment to Pontoise?” 

“Yes, monsieur,” said Oscar. 

“Well, then,” said the painter, “ I hope, monsieur, that 
you will do me the pleasure of being present at my marriage, 
at 1’ Isle- Adam.” 

“ Whom are you marrying? ” asked Oscar. 

“Mademoiselle Leger, Monsieur de Reybert’s granddaugh- 
ter. Monsieur le Comte de Serizy was good enough to ar- 
range the matter for me. I owe him much as an artist, and 
he was anxious to establish my fortune before his death — I 
had scarcely thought of it ” 

“Then Pere Leger married?” said Georges. 

“My daughter,” said Monsieur de Reybert, “and without 
any money.” 

“And he has children?” 

“ One daughter. Quite enough for a widower who had no 
children,” said Pere Leger. “ And, like my partner Moreau, 
J shall have a famous man for my son-in-law,” 


A START IN LIFE . 


387 


“So you still live at l’lsle-Adam?” said Georges to Mon- 
sieur Leger, almost respectfully. 

“Yes; I purchased Cassan.” 

“ Well, I am happy in having chosen this particular day 
for doing the Oise Valley,” said Georges, “for you may do 
me a service, gentlemen.” 

“ In what way ? ” asked Leger. 

“Well, thus,” said Georges. “I am employed by the 
Society of /’ Esperance,* which has just been incorporated, 
and its by-laws approved by letters-patent from the King. 
This institution is, in ten years, to give marriage portions to 
girls and annuities to old people; it will pay for the educa- 
tion of children ; in short, it takes care of everybody ” 

“So I should think!” said old Leger, laughing. “In 
short, you are an insurance agent.” 

“ No, monsieur, I am inspector-general, instructed to estab- 
lish agencies and correspondents with the company through- 
out France ; I am acting only till the agents are appointed ; 
for it is a delicate and difficult matter to find honest men ” 

“ But how did you lose your thirty thousand francs a year ? ” 
asked Oscar. 

“As you lost your arm!” the ex-notary’s clerk replied 
sharply to the ex-attorney’s clerk. 

“Then you invested your fortune in some brilliant deed ? ” 
said Oscar, with somewhat bitter irony. 

“ By Jupiter ! my investments are a sore subject. I have 
more deeds than enough.” 

They had reached Saint-Leu-Taverny, where the travelers 
got out while they changed horses. Oscar admired the brisk- 
ness with which Pierrotin unbuckled the straps of the whiffle- 
tree, while his driver took out the leaders. 

“Poor Pierrotin!” thought he. “Like me, he has not 
risen much in life. Georges has sunk into poverty. All the 
others, by speculation and skill, have made fortunes. Do we 
* Lit. : Trust company. 


388 


A START IN LIFE . 


breakfast here, Pierrotin?” he asked, clapping the man on 
the shoulder. 

“ I am not the driver,” said Pierrotin. 

“ What are you, then?” asked Colonel Husson. 

“ I am the proprietor,” replied Pierrotin. 

“ Well, well, do not quarrel with an old friend,” said 
Oscar, pointing to his mother, but still with a patronizing 
air ; “ do you not remember Madame Clapart ? ” 

It was the more graceful of Oscar to name his mother to 
Pierrotin, because at this moment Madame Moreau (de l’Oise) 
had gotten out of the coupe and looked scornfully at Oscar and 
his mother as she heard the name. 

“ On my honor, madame, I should never have known you; 
nor you either, monsieur. You get it hot in Africa, it would 
seem ? ” 

The disdainful pity Oscar had felt for Pierrotin was the last 
blunder into which vanity betrayed the hero of this scene ; 
and for that he was punished, though not too severely. On 
this wise : Two months after he had settled at Beaumont- 
sur-Oise, Oscar paid his court to Mademoiselle Georgette 
Pierrotin, whose fortune amounted to a hundred and fifty 
thousand francs, and by the end of the winter of 1838 he mar- 
ried the daughter of the owner of the Oise Valley coach ser- 
vice. 

The results of the journey to Presles had given Oscar dis- 
cretion, the evening at Florentine’s had disciplined his 
honesty, the hardships of a military life had taught him the 
value of social distinctions and submission to fate. He was 
prudent, capable, and consequently happy. The Comte de 
SSrizy, before his death, obtained for Oscar the place of reve- 
nue collector at Pontoise. The influence of Monsieur Moreau 
(de l’Oise), of the Comtesse de Serizy, and of Monsieur le 
Baron de Canalis, who, sooner or later, will again have a seat 
in the Ministry, will secure Monsieur Husson’s promotion tQ 


A START IN LIFE. 


the post of receiver-general, and the Camusots now recognize 
him as a relation. 

Oscar is a commonplace man, gentle, unpretentious, and 
modest; faithful — like the Government he serves — to the 
happy medium in all things. He invites neither envy nor 
scorn. In short, he is the modern French citizen. 

Paris, February , 1842. 




THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 
AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT 
AND RACKET 
THE FIRM OF NUCINGEN 
AN EPISODE OF THE REIGN 
OF TERROR 




PREFACE. 


There is in “L’Envers de l’Histoire Contemporaine 99 an 
ominous atmosphere of flagging, combined with a not less 
ominous return to a weaker handling of ideas and schemes 
which the author had handled more strongly earlier. We 
have seen that the secret-society craze — a favorite one with 
most Frenchmen, and closely connected with their famous 
panic-terror of being “ betrayed” in war and politics — had an 
especially strong hold on this most typical of French novelists. 
He had almost begun his true career with the notion of a league 
of “ Devorants,” of persons banded, if not exactly against so- 
ciety, at any rate for the gratifying of their own desires and 
the avenging of their own wrongs, with an utter indifference 
to social laws and arrangements. He ended it, or nearly so, 
with the idea of a contrary league of Consolation, which 
should employ money, time, pains, and combination to supply 
the wants and heal the wounds which Society either directly 
causes or more or less callously neglects. 

The later idea is, of course, a far nobler one than the earlier; 
it shows a saner, healthier, happier state of imagination ; it 
coincides rather remarkably with an increasing tendency of the 
age ever since Balzac’s time. Nay, more, the working out of 
it contains none of those improbabilities and childishnesses 
which, to any but very youthful tastes and judgments, mar the 
“ Histoire des Treize ” [The Thirteen]. And it is also better 
written. Balzac, with that extraordinary “ long develop- 
ment ” of his, as they say of wines, constantly improved in 
this particular ; and whatever may be the doubts on the point 
referred to above, we may say with some confidence that had 
he lived, he would have written, in the mere sense of writing, 
ever better and better. Yet again, we catch quaint and pleas- 
ant echoes of youth in these pages, and are carried back nearly 

(ix) 


X 


PREFACE. 


fifty years in nominal date, and more than twenty in dates of 
actual invention, by such names as Montauran and Pille-Miche 
and Marche-a-Terre. 

But when all this is said, it cannot, I think, be denied that 
a certain dullness, a heaviness, does rest on Madame de la 
Chanterie and LTnitie. The very reference to the “Medecin 
de Campagne,” which Balzac with his systematizing mania 
brings in, calls up another unlucky contrast. There, too, the 
benevolence and the goodness were something fanciful, not to 
say fantastic ; but there was an inspiration, a vigor, to speak 
vulgarly, a “ go,” which we do not find here. Balzac’s awk- 
ward and inveterate habit of parenthetic and episodic narra- 
tives and glances backward is not more obvious here than in 
many other pieces; but there is not, as in some at least of these 
other pieces, strength enough of main interest to carry it off. 
The light is clear, it is religious and touching in its dimness ; 
but the lamp burns low. In the very interesting preface, 
dated July, 1842, which Balzac prefixed to the first collection 
of the Comedie Humaine, he endeavors, naturally enough, to 
represent the division into Scenes de la Vie Parisienne, etc., 
as a rational and reasoned one. Although not quite arbitrary, 
it was of course to a great extent determined by considerations 
which were not those of design ; and we did not require the 
positive testimony which we find in the Letters to tell us that 
in the author’s view, as well as in our own, not a few of the 
stories might have been shifted over from one division to an- 
other, and have filled their place just as well in the other as in 
the one. 

“La Maison du Chat-qui-Pelote,” however, which orig- 
inally bore the much less happy title of “Gloire et Malheur” 
[Fame and Sorrow], was a Scene de la Vie Privee from the 
first, and it bears out better than some of its companions its 
author’s expressed intention of making these “scenes” repre- 
sent youth, whether Parisian or Provincial. Few of Balzac’s 
stories have united the general suffrage for touching grace 


PREFACE. 


xi 

more than this ; and there are few better examples of his 
minute Dutch-painting than the opening passages, or of his 
unconquerable delight in the details of business than his sketch 
of Monsieur Guillaume’s establishment and its ways. The 
French equivalent of the “ Complete Tradesman” of Defoe 
lasted much longer than his English counterpart ; but, except 
in the smaller provincial towns, he is said to be uncommon 
now. As for the plot, if such a stately name can be given to 
so delicate a sketch, it is of course open to downright British 
judgment to pronounce the self-sacrifice of Lebas more ignoble 
than touching, the conduct of Theodore too childish to de- 
serve the excuses sometimes possible for passionate incon- 
stancy, and the character of Augustine angelically idiotic. 
This last outrage, if it were committed, would indeed only be 
an instance of the irreconcilable difference which almost to 
the present day divides English and French ideas of ideally 
perfect girlhood, and of that state of womanhood which cor- 
responds thereto. The candeur adorable which the French- 
man adores and exhibits in the girl ; the uncompromising, 
though mortal, passion of the woman ; are too different from 
any ideal that we have entertained, except for a very short 
period in the eighteenth century. But there are few more 
pathetic and charming impersonations of this other ideal than 
Augustine de Sommervieux. 

“La Maison Nucingen ” has interests of various kinds. 
The story of Madame Surville, and the notary, and his testi- 
mony to Balzac’s competence in bankruptcy matters, have been 
referred to in the General Introduction. “La Maison Nu- 
cingen” is scarcely less an example of this than “ Cesar Birot- 
teau.” It is also a curious study of Parisian business generally, 
showing the intense and extraordinary interest which Balzac 
took in anything speculative. Evil tongues at the time iden- 
tified Nucingen with the first Rothschild of the Paris branch, 
but the resemblances are of the most general and distant kind. 
Indeed, it may be said that Balzac, to his infinite honor both 


xii 


PREFACE. 


in character and genius, seldom indulged in the clumsy lug- 
ging in of real persons by head and shoulders which has come 
into fashion since his time, especially in France. Even where 
there are certain resemblances, as in Henri de Marsay to 
Charles de Remusat, in Rastignac to Thiers, in Lousteau to 
Jules Janin, and elsewhere, the borrowed traits are so blended 
and disguised with others, and the whole so melted down and 
reformed by art, that not merely could no legitimate anger be 
aroused by them, but the artist could ndt be accused of hav- 
ing in any way exceeded his rights as an artist and his duty as 
a gentleman. If he has ever stepped out of these wise and 
decent limits, the transgression is very rare, and certainly 
Nucingen is not an example of it. For the rest, the story 
itself is perhaps more clever and curious than exactly in- 
teresting. 

“ L’Envers de l’Histoire Contemporaine,” as above stated, 
was, in part, one of the very latest of Balzac’s works, and was 
actually finished during his residence at Vierzschovnia. “ Ma- 
dame de la Chanterie,” however, was somewhat earlier, part 
of it having been written in 1842. It appeared in a fragmen- 
tary and rather topsy-turvy fashion, with separate titles, in the 
“ Musee des Families,” from September in the year just named 
to November, 1844, and was only united together in the first 
edition of the Com6die two years later, though even after this 
it had a separate appearance with some others of its author’s 
works in 1847. “L’lnitie,” or, as it was first entitled, “Les 
Fr£res de la Consolation,” was not written till this latter year, 
and appeared in 1848 in the “ Spectateur Republicain,” but 
not as a book till after the author’s death. In both cases 
there was the usual alternation of chapter divisions, with head- 
ings and none. 

“La Maison Nucingen” (which the author also thought of 
calling “La Haute Banque ”) originally appeared with “La 
Femme Sup6rieure ” (“Les Employes”) and that part of 
“ Splendeurs et Misdres ” entitled “ La Torpille,” in October, 


PREFACE, 


xiii 

1 8 38, published by Werdet in two volumes. Six years later 
it took rank as a Scdne de la Vie Parisienne in the first edition 
of the Comedie. 

G. S. 




THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


FIRST EPISODE. 

MADAME DE LA CHANTERIE. 

One fine September evening, in the year 1836, a man of 
about thirty was leaning over the parapet of the quay at a 
point whence the Seine may be surveyed up stream from the 
Jardin des Plantes to Notre-Dame, and down in grand per- 
spective to the Louvre. 

There is no such view elsewhere in the Capital of Ideas 
(Paris). You are standing, as it were, on the poop of a vessel 
that has grown to vast proportions. You may dream there of 
Paris from Roman times to the days of the Franks, from the 
Normans to the Burgundians, through the Middle Ages to 
the Valois, Henri IV., Napoleon, and Louis Philippe. There 
is some vestige or building of each period to bring it to mind. 
The dome of Saint-Genevieve shelters the Latin Quarter. 
Behind you rises the magnificent east end of the cathedral. 
The Hotel de Ville speaks of all the revolutions, the Hotel 
Dieu of all the miseries of Paris. After glancing at the splen- 
dors of the Louvre, take a few steps, and you can see the rags 
that hang out from the squalid crowd of houses that huddle 
between the Quai de la Tournelle and the Hotel Dieu; the 
authorities are, however, about to clear them away. 

In 1836 this astonishing picture inculcated yet another les- 
son. Between the gentleman who leaned over the parapet 
and the cathedral, the deserted plot, known of old as le Ter- 
rain, was still strewn with the ruins of the archbishop’s palace. 
As we gaze there on so many suggestive objects, as the mind 
takes in the past and the present of the city of Paris, religion 

(i) 


2 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. * 


seems to have established herself there that she might lay her 
hands on the sorrows on both sides of the river, from the 
Saint-Antoine suburb to that of Saint-Marceau. 

It is to be hoped that these sublime harmonies may be 
completed by the construction of an episcopal palace in a 
Gothic style to fill the place of the meaningless buildings that 
now stand between the Island, the Rue d’Arcole, and the 
Quai de la Cite. 

This spot, the very heart of old Paris, is beyond anything de- 
serted and melancholy. The waters of the Seine break against 
the wall with a loud noise, the cathedral throws its shadow 
there at sunset. It is not strange that vast thoughts should 
brood there in a brain-sick mah. Attracted, perhaps, by an 
accordance between his own feelings at the moment and those 
to which such a varied prospect must give rise, the loiterer 
folded his hands over the parapet, lost in the twofold contem- 
plation of Paris and of himself ! The shadows spread, lights 
twinkled into being, and still he did not stir ; carried on as 
he was by the flow of a mood of thought, big with the future, 
and made solemn by the past. 

At this instant he heard two persons approaching, whose 
voices had been audible on the stone bridge which they had 
crossed from the Island of the Cite to the Quai de la Tour- 
nelle. The two speakers no doubt believed themselves to be 
alone, and talked somewhat louder than they would have 
done in a more frequented place, or if they had noticed the 
propinquity of a stranger. From the bridge their tones be- 
trayed an eager discussion, bearing, as it seemed, from a few 
words that reached the involuntary listener, on a loan of 
money. As they came nearer, one of the /speakers,, dressed 
as a workingman, turned from the other with a gesture of 
despair. His companion looked around, called the man back, 
and said — N 

“You have not a sou to pay the bridge-toll. Here! ” — 
and he gave him a coin — “and remember, my friend, it is 


the seamy side of history. % 

0 

God Himself who speaks to us when a good thought occurs to 
any of us.” 

The last words startled the dreamer. The man who spoke 
had no suspicion that, to use a proverbial expression, he was 
killing two birds with one stone ; that he spoke to two un- 
happy creatures — a workman at his wits’ end and a soul with- 
out a compass j a victim of what Pan urge’s sheep call Progress, 
and' a victim of what France calls equality. 

These words, simple enough in themselves, acquired gran- 
deur from the tone of the speaker, whose voice had a sort of 
magical charm. Are there not such voices, calm and sweet, 
affecting us like a view of the distant ocean ? 

The speaker’s costume showed him to be a priest, and his 
face, in the last gleam of twilight, was pale and dignified, 
though worn. The sight of a priest coming out of the great 
cathedral of Saint Stephen at Vienna to carry extreme unction 
to a dying man persuaded Werner, the famous tragic poet, to 
become a Catholic. The effect was much the same on our 
Parisian when he saw the man who, without intending it, had 
brought him consolation ; he discerned on the dark line of 
his horizon in the future a long streak of light where the blue 
of heaven was shining, and he followed the path of light, as 
the shepherds of the Gospel followed the voice that called to 
them from on high, “ Christ the Lord is born ! ” 

The man of healing speech walked on under the cathe- 
dral, and by favor of Chance — which is sometimes consistent 
— made his way toward the street from which the loiterer had 
come, and whither he was returning, led there by his own 
mistakes in life. 

This young man’s name was Godefroid. As this narrative 
proceeds, the reader will understand the reasons for giving to 
the actors in it their Christian names only. 

And this is the reason why Godefroid, who lived near the 
Chausee d’ An tin, was lingering at such an hour under the 
shadow of Notre-Dame. 


4 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


He was the son of a retail dealer, who, by economy, had 
made some little fortune, and in him centred all the ambitions 
of his parents, who dreamed of seeing him a notary in Paris. 
At the early age of seven he had been sent to a school, kept 
by the Abbe Liautard, where he was thrown together with 
the children of certain families of distinction, who had 
selected this establishment for the education of their sons, out 
of attachment to religion, which, under the Emperor, was 
somewhat too much neglected in the lycees, or public schools. 
At that age social inequalities are not recognized between 
schoolfellows; but in 1821, when his studies were finished, 
Godefroid, articled to a notary, was not slow to perceive 
the distance that divided him from those with whom he had 
hitherto lived on terms of intimacy. 

While studying the law, he found himself lost in the crowd 
of young men of the citizen class, who, having neither a 
ready-made fortune nor hereditary rank, had nothing to look 
to but their personal worth or persistent industry. The hopes 
built upon him by his father and mother, who had now 
retired from business, stimulated his conceit without giving 
him pride. His parents lived as simply as Dutch folk, not 
spending more than a quarter of their income of twelve 
thousand francs ; they intended to devote their savings, with 
half their capital, to the purchase of a connection for their 
son. Godefroid, reduced also to live under the conditions of 
this domestic thrift, regarded them as so much out of pro- 
portion to his parents’ dreams and his own that he felt disheart- 
ened. In weak characters such discouragement leads to envy. 
While many other men, in whom necessity, determination, 
and good-sense were more marked than talent, went straight 
and steadfastly onward in the path laid down for modest 
ambitions, Godefroid waxed rebellious, longed to shine, 
insisted on facing the brightest light, and so dazzled his eyes. 
He tried to “ get on,” but all his efforts ended in demon- 
strating his incapacity. At last, clearly perceiving too great 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


6 


a discrepancy between his desires and his prospects, he con- 
ceived a hatred of social superiority ; he became a Liberal, 
and tried to make himself famous by a book ; but he learned, 
to his cost, to regard talent much as he regarded rank. 
Having tried by turns the profession of notary, the bar, and 
literature, he now aimed at the higher branch of the law. 

At this juncture his father died. His mother, content in 
her old age with two thousand francs a year, gave up almost 
her whole fortune to his use. Possessor now, at twenty-five, 
of ten thousand francs a year, he thought himself rich, and he 
was so as compared with the past. Hitherto his life had been 
a series of acts with no will behind them, or of impotent 
willing ; so, to keep pace with the age, to act, to become a 
personage, he tried to get into some circle of society by the 
help of his money. 

At first he fell in with journalism, which has always an open 
hand for any capital that comes in its way. Now, to own a 
newspaper is to be a Personage ; it means employing talent 
and sharing its successes without dividing its labors. Nothing 
is more tempting to second-rate men than thus to rise by the 
brains of others. Paris has had a few parvenus of this type, 
whose success is a disgrace both to the age and to those who 
have lent a lifting shoulder. 

In this class of society Godefroid was soon cut out by the 
vulgar cunning of some and the extravagance of others, by 
the money of ambitious capitalists or the manoeuvring of edi- 
tors ; then he was dragged into the dissipations that a literary 
or political life entails, the habits of critics behind the scenes, 
and the amusements needed by men who work their brains 
hard. Thus he fell into bad company ; but he there learned 
that he was an insignificant-looking person, and that he had 
one shoulder higher than the other without redeeming this 
malformation by any distinguished ill-nature or wit. Bad 
manners are a form of self-payment which actors snatch by 
telling the truth. 


6 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


Short, badly made, devoid of wit or of any strong bent, all 
seemed at an end for a young man at a time when for success 
in any career the highest gifts of mind are as nothing without 
luck, or the tenacity which commands luck. 

The revolution of 1830 poured oil on Godefroid’s wounds; 
he found the courage of hope, which is as good as that of 
despair. Like many another obscure journalist, he got an 
appointment where his Liberal ideas, at loggerheads with the 
demands of a newly established power, made him but a re- 
fractory instrument. Veneered only with Liberalism, he did 
not know, as superior men did, how to hold his own. To 
obey the Ministry was to him to surrender his opinions. And 
the Government itself seemed to him false to the laws that had 
given rise to it. Godefroid declared in favor of movement 
when what was needed was tenacity ; he came back to Paris 
almost poor, but faithful to the doctrines of the opposition. 

Alarmed by the licentiousness of the press, and yet more by 
the audacity of the republican party, he sought in retirement 
the only life suited to a being of incomplete faculties, devoid 
of such force as might defy the rough jolting of political life, 
weary, too, of repeated failures, of suffering and struggles 
which had won him no glory ; and friendless, because friend- 
ship needs conspicuous qualities or defects, while possessing 
feelings that were sentimental rather than deep. Was it not, 
in fact, the only prospect open to a young man who had al- 
ready been several times cheated by pleasure, and who had 
grown prematurely old from friction in a social circle that 
never rests nor lets others rest ? 

His mother, who was quietly dying in the peaceful village 
of Auteuil, sent to her son to come to her, as much for the 
sake of having him with her as to start him in the road where 
he might find the calm and simple happiness that befits such 
souls. She had at last taken Godefroid’s measure when she 
saw that at twenty-eight he had reduced his whole fortune to 
four thousand francs a year ; his desires blunted, his fancied 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


7 


talents extinct, his energy nullified, his ambition crushed, and 
his hatred for every one who rose by legitimate effort increased 
by his many disappointments. 

She tried to arrange a marriage for Godefroid with the only 
daughter of a retired merchant, thinking that a wife might be 
a guardian to his distressful mind, but the old father brought 
the mercenary spirit that abides in those who have been en- 
gaged in trade to bear on the question of settlements. At 
the end of a year of attentions and intimacy, Godefroid’s 
suit was rejected. In the first place, in the opinion of these 
case-hardened traders, the young man must necessarily have 
retained a deep-dyed immorality from his former pursuits; 
and then, even during this past year, he had drawn upon his 
capital both to dazzle the parents and to attract the daughter. 
This not unpardonable vanity gave the finishing touch; the 
family had a horror of unthrift; and their refusal was final 
when they heard that Godefroid had sacrificed in six years a 
hundred and fifty thousand francs of his capital. 

The blow fell all the harder on his aching heart because the 
girl was not at all good-looking. Still, under his mother’s 
influence, Godefroid had credited the object of his addresses 
with a sterling character and the superior advantages of a 
sound judgment ; he was accustomed to her face, he had 
studied its expression, he liked the young lady’s voice, man- 
ners, and look. Thus, after staking the last hope of his life 
on this attachment, he felt the bitterest despair. 

His mother dying, he found himself— he whose require- 
ments had always followed the tide of fashion— with five 
thousand francs for his whole fortune, and the certainty of 
never being able to repair any future loss, since he saw him- 
self incapable of the energy which is imperatively demanded 
for the grim task of “ making a fortune.” 

But a man who is weak, aggrieved, and irritable cannot 
submit to be extinguished at a blow. While still in mourn- 
ing, Godefroid wandered through Paris in search of something 


8 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


to “ turn up ; ” he dined in public rooms, he rashly introduced 
himself to strangers, he mingled in society, and met with 
nothing but opportunities for expenditure. As he wandered 
about the boulevards, he was so miserable that the sight of a 
mother with a young daughter to marry gave him as keen a 
pang as that of a young man going on horseback to the Bois, 
of a parvenu in a smart carriage, or of an official with a rib- 
bon in his button-hole. The sense of his own inadequacy told 
him that he could not pretend even to the more respectable of 
second-class positions, nor to the easiest form of office-work. 
And he had spirit enough to be constantly vexed, and sense 
enough to bewail himself in bitter self-accusation. 

Incapable of contending with life, conscious of certain 
superior gifts, but devoid of the will that brings them into 
play, feeling himself incomplete, lacking force to undertake 
any great work, or to resist the temptations of those tastes he 
had acquired from education or recklessness in his past life, 
he was a victim to three maladies, any one of them enough to 
disgust a man with life when he has ceased to exercise his 
religious faith. Indeed, Godefroid wore the expression so 
common now among men, that it has become the Parisian 
type; it bears the stamp of disappointed or smothered am- 
bitions, of mental distress, of hatred lulled by the apathy of 
a life amply filled up by the superficial and daily spectacle of 
Paris, of satiety seeking stimulants, of repining without talent, 
of the affectation of force ; the venom of past failure which 
makes a man smile at scoffing, and scorn all that is elevating, 
misprize the most necessary authorities, enjoy their dilemmas, 
and disdain all social forms. 

This Parisian disease is to the active and persistent coalition 
of energetic malcontents what the soft wood is to the sap of a 
tree ; it preserves it, feeds it, and hides it. 

Weary of himself, Godefroid one morning resolved to give 
himself some reason for living. He had met a former school- 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


9 


fellow, who had proved to be the tortoise of the fable while 
he himself had been the hare. In the course of such a con- 
versation as is natural to old companions while walking in the 
sunshine on the Boulevard des Italiens, he was amazed to find 
that success had attended this man, who, apparently far less 
gifted than himself with talent and fortune, had simply re- 
solved each day to do as he had resolved the day before. 
The brain-sick man determined to imitate this simplicity of 
purpose. 

“ Life in the world is like the earth,” his friend had said ; 
“ it yields in proportion to our labors.” 

Godefroid was in debt. As his first penance, his first duty, 
he required himself to live in seclusion and pay his debts out 
of his income. For a man who was in the habit of spending 
six thousand francs when he had five, it was no light thing to 
reduce his expenses to two thousand francs. He read the 
advertisement-sheets every morning, hoping to find a place 
of refuge where he might live on a fixed sum, and where he 
might enjoy the solitude necessary to a man who wanted to 
study and examine himself and discern a vocation. The 
manners and customs of the boarding-houses in the Latin 
Quarter were an offense to his taste ; a private pension, he 
thought, would be unhealthy ; and he was fast drifting back 
into the fatal uncertainty of a will-less man, when the following 
advertisement caught his eye : 

“ Small apartments, at seventy francs a month ; might suit a clerk in 
•orders. Quiet habits expected. Board included ; and the rooms will be 
inexpensively furnished on mutual agreement. Inquire of M. Millet, 
grocer, Rue Chanoinesse, by Notre-Dame, for all further particulars. 

Attracted by the artless style of this paragraph, and the 
aroma of simplicity it seemed to bear, Godefroid presented 
himself at the grocer’s store at about four in the afternoon, 
and was told that at that hour Madame de la Chanterie was 
dining, and could see no one at meal-times. The lady would 


10 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


be visible in the evening after seven, or between ten and 
twelve in the morning. While he talked, Monsieur Millet 
took stock of Godefroid, and proceeded to put him through 
his first examination — “ Was monsieur single? Madame 
wished for a lodger of regular habits. The house was locked 
up by eleven at latest. 

“Well,” said he in conclusion, “you seem to me, mon- 
sieur, to be of an age to suit Madame de la Chanterie’s 
views.” 

“ What age do you suppose I am?” asked Godefroid. 

“Somewhere about forty,” replied the grocer. 

This plain answer cast Godefroid into the depths of misan- 
thropy and dejection. He went to dine on the Quai de la 
Tournelle, and returned to gaze at Notre-Dame just as the fires 
of the setting sun were rippling and breaking in wavelets on 
the buttresses of the great nave. The quay was already in 
shadow, while the towers still glittered in the glow, and the 
contrast struck Godefroid as he tasted all the bitterness which 
the grocer’s brutal simplicity had stirred within him. 

Thus the young man was oscillating between the whisper- 
ings of despair and the appealing tones of religious harmony 
aroused in his mind by the cathedral bells, when, in the dark- 
ness, and silence, and calm moonshine, the priest’s speech fell 
on his ear. Though far from devout — like most men of the 
century — his feelings were touched by these words, and he 
went back to the Rue Chanoinesse, where he had but just 
decided not to go. 

The priest and Godefroid were equally surprised on turning 
into the Rue Massillon, opposite the north door of the cathe- 
dral, at the spot where it ends by the Rue de la Colombe, and \ 
is called Rue des Marmousets. When Godefroid stopped * 
under the arched doorway of the house where Madame de la 
Chanterie lived, the priest turned round to examine him by 
the light of a hanging oil-lamp, which will, very likely, be 
pne of the last to disappear in the heart of old Paris, 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 


11 


“ Do you wish to see Madame de la Chanterie, monsieur? ” 
asked the priest. 

“ Yes,” replied Godefroid. “ The words I have just heard 
you utter to that workman prove to me that this house, if you 
dwell in it, must be good for the soul.” 

“Then you witnessed my failure,” said the priest, lifting 
the knocker, “ for I did not succeed.” 

“It seems to me that it was the workman who failed. He 
had begged sturdily enough for money.” 

“ Alas ! ” said the priest, “ one of the greatest misfortunes 
attending revolutions in France is that each, in its turn, offers 
a fresh premium to the ambitions of the lower classes. To rise 
above his status and make a fortune, which, in these days, is 
considered the social guarantee, the workman throws himself 
into monstrous plots, which, if they fail, must bring those 
who dabble in them before the bar of human justice. This is 
what good-nature sometimes ends in.” 

The porter now opened a heavy gate, and the priest said to 
Godefroid — 

“ Then you have come about the rooms to be let ? the ‘ little 
suite,’ we call it.” 

“Yes, monsieur.” 

The priest and Godefroid then crossed a fairly wide court- 
yard, beyond which stood the black mass of a tall house, 
flanked by a square tower even higher than the roof, and 
amazingly old. Those who know the history of Paris are 
aware that the soil has risen so much round the cathedral 
that there is not a trace to be seen of the twelve steps which 
originally led up to it. Hence what was the first floor of this 
house must now form the cellars. There is a short flight of 
outer steps to the door of the tower, and inside it an ancient 
Vise or stairs, winding in a spiral round a newell carved to 
imitate a vine-stock. This style, resembling that of the Louis 
XII. staircases at Blois, dates as far back as the fourteenth 
century. 


O 


12 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


Struck by these various signs of antiquity, Godefroid could 
not help exclaiming — 

“ This tower was not built yesterday ! ” 

“ It is said to have withstood the attacks of the Normans 
and to have formed part of a primeval palace of the kings of 
Paris ; but according to more probable traditions, it was the 
residence of Fulbert, the famous canon, and the uncle of 
Heloise.” 

As he spoke the priest opened the door of the apartment, 
which seemed to be the first floor, and which, in fact, is now 
but just above the ground of both the outer and the inner 
courtyard — for there is a small second court. 

In the first room a servant sat knitting by the light of a 
small lamp; she wore a cap devoid of any ornament, but its 
gauffered cambric frills. She stuck one of the needles through 
her hair, but did not lay down her knitting as she rose to open 
the door of a drawing-room looking out on the inner court. 
This room was lighted up. The woman’s dress suggested to 
Godefroid that of some gray sisters. 

“ Madame, I have found you a tenant,” said the priest, 
showing in Godefroid, who saw in the room three men, sitting 
in armchairs near Madame de la Chanterie. 

The three gentlemen rose ; the mistress of the house also ; 
and when the priest had pushed forward a chair for the 
stranger, and he had sat down in obedience to a sign from 
Madame de la Chanterie and an old-fashioned bidding to 
“ Be seated,” the Parisian felt as if he were far indeed from 
Paris, in remote Brittany, or the backwoods of Canada. 

There are, perhaps, degrees of silence. Godefroid, struck 
already by the tranquillity of the Rue Massillon and Rue Cha- 
noinesse, where a vehicle passes perhaps twice in a month, 
struck too by the stillness of the courtyard and the tower, 
may have felt himself at the very heart of silence, in this 
drawing-room, hedged round by so many old streets, old 
courtyards, and old walls. 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


13 


This part of the Island, called the Cloister, preserves the 
character common to all cloisters ; it is damp, and cold, and 
monastic ; silence reigns there unbroken, even during the 
noisiest hours of the day. It may also be remarked that this 
part of the city, lying between the body of the cathedral and 
the river, is to the north and under the shadow of Notre- 
Dame. The east wind loses itself there, unchecked by any 
obstacle, and the fogs from the Seine are to some extent en- 
trapped by the blackened walls of the ancient metropolitan 
church. 

So no one will be surprised at the feeling that came over 
Godefroid on finding himself in this ancient abode, and in 
the presence of four persons as silent and as solemn as every- 
thing around them. He did not look about him; his curiosity 
centred in Madame de la Chanterie, whose name even had 
already puzzled him. 

This lady was evidently *a survival from another century, 
not to say another world. She had a rather sweet face, with 
a soft, coldly-colored complexion, an aquiline nose, a benign 
brow, hazel eyes, and a double chin, the whole framed in 
curls of silver hair. Her dress could only be described by 
the old name of fourreau (literally a sheath, a tightly fitting 
dress), so tightly was she cased in it, in the fashion of the 
eighteenth century. The material — silk of carmelite gray, 
finely and closely striped with green — seemed to have come 
down from the same date ; the bodice, cut low, was hidden 
under a mantilla of richer silk,* flounced with black lace, and 
fastened at the bosom with a brooch containing a miniature. 
Her feet, shod in black velvet shoes, rested on a little stool. 
Madame de la Chanterie, like her maidservant, was knitting 
stockings, and had a knitting-pin stuck through her waving 
hair under her lace cap. 

“ Have you seen Monsieur Millet ? ” she asked Godefroid 
in the head voice peculiar to dowagers of the Saint-Germain 
* Poult-de-soie. 


14 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


suburb, as if to invite him to speak, seeing that he was almost 
thunderstruck. 

“ Yes, madame.” 

“Iam afraid the rooms will hardly suit you,” she went on, 
observing that her proposed tenant was dressed with elegance 
in clothes that were new and smart. 

Godefroid, in fact, was wearing patent-leather shoes, yel- 
low gloves, handsome shirt-studs, and a neat watch-chain 
passed through the button-hole of a black silk vest sprigged 
with blue. 

Madame de la Chanterie took a small silver whistle out of 
her pocket and blew it. The woman-servant came in. 

“ Manon, child, show this gentleman the rooms. Will 
you, my dear friend, accompany him ? ” she said to the priest. 
“And if by any chance the rooms should suit you,” she 
added, rising and looking at Godefroid, “we will afterward 
discuss the terms.” 

Godefroid bowed and went out. He heard the iron rattle 
of a bunch of keys which Manon took out of a drawer, and 
saw her light a candle in a large brass candlestick. 

Manon led the way without speaking a word. When he 
found himself on the stairs again, climbing to the upper floors, 
he doubted the reality of things ; he felt dreaming though 
awake, and saw the whole world of fantastic romance such as 
he had read of in his hours of idleness. And any Parisian 
dropped here, as he was, out of the modern city with its 
luxurious houses and furniture, its glittering restaurants and 
theatres, and all the stirring heart of Paris, would have felt as 
he did. The single candle carried by the servant lighted the 
winding-stair but dimly; spiders had hung it with their dusty 
webs. 

Manors dress consisted of a skirt broadly pleated and 
made of coarse woolen stuff ; the bodice was cut square at the 
neck, behind and before, and all her clothes seemed to move 
in a piece. Having reached the third floor, which had been 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


15 


the fourth, Manon stopped, turned the springs of an antique 
lock, and opened a door painted in coarse imitation of knotted 
mahogany. 

“ There ! ” said she, leading the way. 

Who had lived in these rooms? A miser, an artist, who 
had died of want, a cynic indifferent to the world, or a pious 
man who was alien to it? Any one of the four seemed pos- 
sible, as the visitor smelt the very odor of poverty, saw the 
greasy stains on wall-papers covered with a layer of smoke, the 
blackened ceilings, the windows with their small dusty panes, 
the brown-tiled floor, the wainscot sticky with a deposit of fog. 
A damp chill came down the fireplaces, faced with carved stone- 
work that had been painted, and with mirrors framed in the 
seventeenth century. The rooms were at the angle of a square, 
as the house stood, inclosing the inner courtyard, but this 
Godefroid could not see, as it was dark. 

“ Who used to live here ? ” Godefroid asked of the priest. 

“A councilor to the Parlement, madame’s granduncle, a 
Monsieur de Boisfrelon. He had been quite childish ever 
since the Revolution, and died in 1832 at the age of ninety- 
six ; madame could not bear the idea of seeing a stranger in 
the rooms so soon ; still, she cannot endure the loss of rent.” 

“ Oh, and madame will have the place cleaned and fur- 
nished, to be all monsieur could wish,” added Manon. 

“It will only depend on how you wish to arrange the 
rooms,” said the priest. “They can be made into a nice 
sitting-room and a large bedroom and dressing-room, and the 
two small rooms round the corner are large enough for a 
spacious study. That is how my rooms are arranged below 
this, and those on the next floor.” 

“Yes,” said Manon; “Monsieur Alain’s rooms are just 
like these, only that they look out on the tower.” 

“I think I had better see the rooms again by daylight,” 
said Godefroid shyly. 

“Perhaps so,” said Manon. 


16 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HI ST OR h 


The priest and Godefroid went downstairs again, leaving 
Manon to lock up, and she then followed to light them down. 
Then, when he was in the drawing-room, Godefroid, having 
recovered himself, could, while talking to Madame de la 
Chanterie, study the place, the personages, and the sur- 
roundings. 

The window-curtains of this drawing-room were of old red 
satin ; there was a cornice-valance, and the curtains were 
looped with silk cord ; the red tiles of the floor showed be- 
yond an ancient tapestry carpet that was too small to cover it 
entirely. The woodwork was painted stone-color. The ceil- 
ing, divided down the middle by a joist starting from the 
chimney, looked like an addition lately conceded to modern 
luxury ; the easy-chairs were of wood painted white, with tap- 
estry seats. A shabby clock, standing between two gilt candle- 
sticks, adorned the mantel. An old table with stag’s feet 
stood by Madame de la Chanterie, and on it were her balls of 
wool in a wicker basket. A clockwork lamp threw light on 
the picture. 

The three men, sitting as rigid, motionless, and speechless 
as bronzes, had, like Madame de la Chanterie, evidently 
ceased speaking on hearing the stranger return. Their faces 
were perfectly cold and reserved, as befitted the room, the 
house, and the neighborhood. 

Madame de la Chanterie agreed that Godefroid’s observa- 
tions were just, and said that she had postponed doing any- 
thing till she was informed of the intentions of her lodger, or 
rather of her boarder; for if the lodger could conform to the 
ways of the household, he was to board with them — but their 
ways were so unlike those of Paris life ! Here, in the Rue 
Chanoinesse, they kept country hours ; every one, as a 
rule, had to be in by ten at night ; noise was not to be 
endured ; neither women nor children were admitted, so that 
their regular habits might not be interfered with. No one, 
perhaps, but a priest could agree to such a rule. At any rate, 


the seamy side of History. 


17 


Madame de la Chanterie wished for some one who liked plain 
living and had few requirements ; she could only afford the 
most necessary furniture in the rooms. Monsieur Alain was 
satisfied, however — and she bowed to one of the gentlemen — 
and she would do the same for the new lodger as for the old. 

“But,” said the priest, “ I do not think that monsieur is 
quite inclined to come and join us in our convent.” 

“Indeed; why not?” said Monsieur Alain. “We are all 
quite content, and we all get on very well.” 

“Madame,” said Godefroid, rising, “I will have the 
honor of calling on you again to-morrow.” 

Though he was but a young man, the four old gentlemen 
and Madame de la Chanterie stood up, and the priest escorted 
him to the outer steps. A whistle sounded, and at the signal 
the porter appeared, lantern in hand, to conduct Godefroid to 
the street ; then he closed the yellow gate, as heavy as that 
of a prison, and covered with arabesque ironwork, so old that 
it would be hard to determine its date. 

When Godefroid found himself sitting in a hack, and being 
carried to the living regions of Paris, where light and warmth 
reigned, all he had just seen seemed like a dream ; and, as he 
walked along the Boulevard des Italiens, his impressions 
already seemed as remote as a memory. He could not help 
saying to himself — 

“Shall I find those people there to-morrow, I wonder?” 

On the following day, when he woke in the midst of the 
elegance of modern luxury and the refinements of English 
comfort, Godefroid recalled all the details of his visit to the 
Cloister of Notre-Dame, and came to some conclusions in his 
mind as to the things he had seen there. The three gentle- 
men, whose appearance, attitude, and silence had left an im- 
pression on him, were no doubt boarders, as well as the priest. 
Madame de la Chanterie’s gravity seemed to him to be the 
result of the reserved dignity with which she had endured 
2 


18 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


some great sorrow. And yet, in spite of the explanations he 
gave himself, Godefroid could not help feeling that there was 
an air of mystery in those uncommunicative faces. He cast 
a glance at his furniture to choose what he could keep, what 
he thought indispensable; but, transporting them in fancy to 
the horrible rooms in the Rue Chanoinesse, he could not help 
laughing at the grotesque contrast they would make there, 
and determined to sell everything, and pay away so much as 
they might bring; leaving the furnishing of the rooms to 
Madame de la Chanterie. He longed for a new life, and the 
objects that could recall his old existence must be bad for him. 
In his craving for transformation — for his was one of those 
natures which .rush forward at once with a bound, instead of 
approaching a situation step by step as others do — he was 
seized, as he sat at breakfast, by an idea : he would realize his 
fortune, pay his debts, and place the surplus with the banking 
firm his father had done business with. 

This banking house was that of MM. Mongenod & Co., estab- 
lished in Paris since 1816 or 1817, a firm whose reputation 
had never been blown on in the midst of the commercial de- 
pravity which at this time had blighted, more or less, several 
great Paris houses. Thus, in spite of their immense wealth, 
the houses of Nucingen and du Tillet, of Keller Brothers, of 
Palma & Co., suffered under a secret dis-esteem whispered, as 
it were, between lip and ear. Hideous transactions had led 
to such splendid results; and political successes, nay, mon- 
archical principles, had overgrown such foul beginnings, that 
no one in 1834 thought for a moment of the mud in which 
the roots were set of such majestic trees — the upholders of 
the State. At the same time, there was not one of these 
bankers that did not feel aggrieved by praises of the house of 
Mongenod. 

The Mongenods, following the example of English bankers, 
make no display of wealth ; they do everything very quietly, 
and carry on their business with such prudence, shrewdness, 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


19 


and honesty as allow them to operate with certainty from one 
end of the world to the other. 

The present head of the house, Frederic Mongenod, is 
brother-in-law to the Vicomte de Fontaine. Thus his numer- 
ous family is connected, through the Baron de Fontaine, with 
Monsieur Grossetete, the receiver-general (brother to the 
Grossetdte & Co. of Limoges), with the Vandenesses, and 
with Planat de Baudry, another receiver-general. This rela- 
tionship, after being of the greatest service to the late Monge- 
nod senior in his financial operations at the time of the 
Restoration, had gained him the confidence of many of the 
old nobility, whose capital and vast savings were intrusted to 
his bank. Far from aiming at the peerage, like Keller, Nuc- 
ingen, and du Tillet, the Mongenods kept out of political life, 
and knew no more of it than was needed for banking business. 

Mongenod’s bank occupies a magnificent house in the Rue 
de la Victoire, with a garden behind and a courtyard in front, 
where Madame Mongenod resided with her two sons, with 
whom she was in partnership. Madame la Vicomtesse de 
Fontaine had taken out her share on the death of the elder 
Mongenod in 1827. Frederic Mongenod, a handsome fellow 
of about thirty-five, with a cold manner, as silent and re- 
served as a Genevese, and as neat as an Englishman, had ac- 
quired under his father all the qualifications needed in his 
difficult business. He was more cultivated than most bankers, 
for his education had given him the general knowledge which 
forms the curriculum of the Polytechnic School ; and, like 
many bankers, he had an occupation, a taste, outside his 
regujar business, a love of physics and chemistry. Mongenod 
junior, ten years younger than Frederic, filled the place, 
under his elder brother, that a head-clerk holds under a 
lawyer or a notary ; Frederic was training him, as he himself 
had been trained by his father, in the scientific side of bank- 
ing, for a banker is to money what a writer is to ideas — they 
both ought to know everything. 


20 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


Godefroid, as he mentioned his family name, could see how 
highly his father had been respected, for he was shown through 
the offices at once to that next to Mongenod’s private room. 
This room was shut in by glass doors, so that, in spite of his 
wish not to listen, Godefroid overheard the conversation going 
on within. 

“ Madame, your account shows sixteen hundred thousand 
francs on both sides of the balance sheet,” Mongenod the 
younger was saying. “ 1 know not what my brother’s views 
may be ; he alone can decide whether an advance of a hun- 
dred thousand francs is possible. You lacked prudence. It 
is not wise to put sixteen hundred thousand francs into a 
business ” 

“Too loud, Louis!” said a woman’s voice. “Your 
brother’s advice is never to speak but in an undertone. There 
may be some one in the little waiting-room.” 

At this instant Frederic Mongenod opened the door from 
his living rooms to his private office ; he saw Godefroid, and 
went through to the inner room, where he bowed respectfully 
to the lady who was talking to his brother. 

He showed Godefroid in first, saying as he did so: “And 
whom have I the honor of addressing?” 

As soon as Godefroid had announced himself, Frederic 
offered him a chair ; and while the banker was opening his 
desk, Louis Mongenod and the lady, who was none else than 
Madame de la Chanterie, rose and went up to Frederic. Then 
they all three went into a window recess, where they stood 
talking to Madame Mongenod, who was in all the secrets of 
the business. For thirty years past this clever woman had 
given ample proofs of her capacity, to her husband first, now 
to her sons, and she was, in fact, an active partner in the 
house, signing for it as they did. Godefroid saw in a pigeon- 
hole a number of boxes, labeled “La Chanterie,” and num- 
bered i to 7. 

When the conference was ended by a word from the senior 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


21 


to his brother, “ Well, then, go to the cashier,” Madame de 
la Chanterie turned round, saw Godefroid, restrained a start 
of surprise, and then asked a few whispered questions of Mon- 
genod, who replied briefly, also in a low voice. 

Madame de la Chanterie wore thin prunella shoes and gray 
silk stockings; she had on the same dress as before, and was 
wrapped in the Venetian cloak that was just coming into 
fashion again. Her drawn bonnet of green silk, in the style 
of a good woman’s, was lined with white, and her face was 
framed in flowing lace. She stood very erect, in an attitude 
which bore witness, if not to high birth, at any rate to aristo- 
cratic habits. But for her extreme affability, she would per- 
haps have seemed proud. In short, she was very imposing. 

“It is not so much good-luck as a dispensation of Provi- 
dence that has brought us together here, monsieur,” said she 
to Godefroid. “ I was on the point of declining a boarder 
whose habits, as I fancied, were ill-suited to those of my house- 
hold ; but Monsieur Mongenod has just given me some informa- 
tion as to your family which is ” 

1 ‘ Indeed, madame — monsieur ” said Godefroid, ad- 
dressing the lady and the banker together, “ I have no longer 
any family, and I came to ask advice of my late father’s 
banker to arrange my affairs in accordance with a new plan 
of life.” 

Godefroid told his story in a few words, and expressed his 
desire of leading a new life. 

“Formerly,” said he, “a man in my position would have 
turned monk; but there are now no religious Orders ” 

“ Go to live with madame, if she will accept you as a 
boarder,” said Frederic Mongenod, after exchanging glances 
with Madame de la Chanterie, “and do not sell your invest- 
ments ; leave them in my hands. Give me the schedule of 
your debts ; I will fix dates of payment with your creditors, 
and you can draw for your own use a hundred and fifty francs 
a month. It will take about two years to pay everything off. 


22 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HIS TOR Y. 


During those two years, in the house to which you are going, 
you will have ample leisure to think of a career, especially 
as the people you will be living with can give you good 
advice.” 

Louis Mongenod came back with a hundred thousand-franc 
notes, which he gave to Madame de la Chanterie. Godefroid 
offered his arm to his future landlady, and took her to her 
coach. 

“Then we shall meet again presently,” said she in a kind 
tone. 

“At what hour shall you be at home, madame?” said 
Godefroid. 

“In two hours’ time.” 

“I have time to get rid of my furniture,” said he with a 
bow. 

During the few minutes while Madame de la Chanterie’s 
arm had lain on his as they walked side by side, Godefroid 
could not see beyond the halo cast about this woman by the 
words, “Your account stands at sixteen hundred thousand 
francs,” spoken by Louis Mongenod to a lady who buried 
her life in the depths of the Cloister of Notre-Dame. 

This idea, “She must be rich!” had entirely changed 
his view of things. “ What age is she, I wonder? ” 

And he had a vision of a romance in his residence in the 
Rue Chanoinesse. 

“ She looks like an aristocrat; does she dabble in banking 
affairs? ” he asked himself. 

And in our day nine hundred and ninety-nine men out of 
a thousand would have thought of the possibility of marrying 
this woman. 

A furniture dealer, who was also a decorator, but chiefly an 
agent for furnished flats, gave about three thousand francs for 
all that Godefroid wished to dispose of, leaving the things in 
his rooms for the few days needed to clean and arrange the 
dreadful rooms in the Rue Chanoinesse. 


the seamy side of history. 


23 


Thither the brain-sick youth at once repaired ; he called in 
a painter, recommended by Madame de la Chanterie, who 
undertook for a moderate sum to whitewash the ceilings, clean 
the windows, paint the wainscoting like gray maple, and color 
the floors, within a week. Godefroid measured the rooms to 
carpet them all alike with green drugget of the cheapest de- 
scription. He wished everything to be uniform and as simple 
as possible in his cell. 

Madame de la Chanterie approved of this. With Manon’s 
assistance she calculated how much white dimity would be 
needed for the window curtains and for a simple iron bed- 
stead ; then she undertook to procure the stuff and to have 
them made for a price so small as to amaze Godefroid. With 
the new furniture he would send in, his apartments would not 
cost him more than six hundred francs. 

“ So I can take about a thousand to Monsieur Mongenod.” 

“ We here lead a Christian life,” said Madame de la Chan- 
terie, “which is, as you know, quite out of keeping with 
much superfluity, and I fear you still preserve too many.” 

As she gave her new boarder this piece of advice, she 
glanced at the diamond that sparkled in a ring through which 
the ends of Godefroid’s blue necktie were drawn. 

“I only mention this,” she added, “because I perceive 
that you are preparing to break with the dissipated life of 
which you spoke with regret to Monsieur Mongenod.” 

Godefroid gazed at Madame de la Chanterie, listening with 
delight to the harmony of her clear voice ; he studied her face, 
which was perfectly colorless, worthy to be that of one of the 
grave, cold Dutchwomen so faithfully depicted by the painters 
of the Flemish school, faces on which a wrinkle would be 
impossible. 

“ Plump and fair ! ” thought he, as he went away. “ Still, 
her hair is white ” 

Godefroid, like all weak natures, had readily accustomed 
himself to the idea of a new life, believing it would be perfect 


24 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


happiness, and he was eager to settle in the Rue Chanoinesse ; 
nevertheless, he had a gleam of prudence — or, if you like, of 
suspicion. Two days before moving in he went again to 
Monsieur Mongenod to ask for further information concern- 
ing the household he was about joining. During the few 
minutes he had spent now and then in his future home, to see 
what alterations were being made, he had observed the going 
and coming of several persons whose appearance and manner, 
without any air of mystery, suggested that they were busied in 
the practice of some profession, some secret occupation with 
the residents in the house. At this time many plots were afoot 
to help the elder branch of Bourbons to remount the throne, 
and Godefroid believed there was some conspiracy here. 

But when he found himself in the banker’s private room 
and under his searching eye, he was ashamed of himself as he 
formulated his question and saw a sardonic smile on Frederic 
Mongenod’s lips. 

“ Madame la Baronne de la Chanterie,” he replied, “is one 
of the obscurest but one of the most honorable women in 
Paris. Have you any particular reason for asking for infor- 
mation ? ” 

Godefroid fell back on flat excuses — he was arranging to 
live a long time with these strangers, and it was as well to 
know to whom he was tying himself, and the like. But the 
banker’s smile only became more and more ironical, and 
Godefroid more and more ashamed, till he blushed at the step 
he had taken, and got nothing by it ; for he dared ask no 
more questions about Madame de la Chanterie or his fellow- 
boarders. 

Two days later, after dining for the last time at the Cafe 
Anglais, and seeing the two first pieces at the Varfefes, at ten 
o’clock on a Monday night he came to sleep in the Rue 
Chanoinesse, where Manon lighted him to his room. 

Solitude has a charm somewhat akin to that of the wild life 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


25 


of savages, which no European ever gives up after having once 
tasted it. This may seem strange in an age when every one 
lives so completely in the sight of others that everybody is 
inquisitive about everybody else, and that privacy will soon 
have ceased to exist, so quickly do the eyes of the Press — the 
modern Argus — increase in boldness and intrusiveness ; and 
yet the statement is supported by the evidence of the six first 
Christian centuries, when no recluse ever came back to social 
life again. There are few mental wounds that solitude cannot 
cure. Thus, in the first instance, Godefroid was struck by 
the calm and stillness of his new abode, exactly as a tired 
traveler finds rest in a bath. 

On the day after his arrival as a boarder with Madame de 
la Chanterie, he could not help cross-examining himself on 
finding he was thus cut off from everything, even from Paris, 
though he remained under the shadow of its cathedral. Here, 
stripped of every social vanity, there would henceforth be 
no witnesses to his deeds but his conscience and his fellow- 
boarders. This was leaving the beaten highway of the world 
for an unknown track ; and whither would the track lead 
him ? To what occupation would he find himself committed ? 

He had been lost in such reflections for a couple of hours, 
when Manon, the only servant of the establishment, knocked 
at his door and told him that the second breakfast was served ; 
they were waiting for him. Twelve was striking. 

The new boarder went downstairs at once, prompted by his 
curiosity to see the five persons with whom he was thence- 
forth to live. On entering the drawing-room, he found all 
the residents in the house standing up and dressed precisely 
as they had been on the day when he had first come to make 
inquiries. 

“ Did you sleep well ? ” asked Madame de la Chanterie. 

“I did not wake till ten o’clock,” said Godefroid, bowing 
to the four gentlemen, who returned the civility with much 
gravity. 


26 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


“ We quite expected it,” said the old man, known as Mon- 
sieur Alain, and he smiled. 

“Manon spoke of the second breakfast,” Godefroid went 
on. “I have, I fear, already broken one of your rules with- 
out intending it. At what hour do you rise?” addressing 
the lady. 

“ We do not get up quite by the rule of the monks of old,” 
replied Madame de la Chanterie graciously, “but, like work- 
men, at six in winter and at half-past three in summer. We 
also go to bed by the rule of the sun ; we are always asleep 
by nine in winter, by half-past eleven in summer. We drink 
some milk, which is brought from our own farm, after prayers, 
all but Monsieur l’Abbe de Veze, who performs early mass at 
Notre-Dame — at six in summer, at seven in winter — and these 
gentlemen as well as I, your humble servant, attend that 
service every day.” 

Madame de la Chanterie finished this speech at table, where 
her five guests were now seated. 

The dining-room, painted gray throughout, and decorated 
with carved wood of a design showing the taste of Louis XIV., 
opened out of the sort of anteroom where Manon sat, and ran 
parallel with Madame de la Chanterie’s room, adjoining the 
drawing-room, no doubt. There was no ornament but an old 
clock. The furniture consisted of six chairs, their oval backs 
upholstered with worsted-work evidently done by Madame de 
la Chanterie, of two mahogany sideboards, and a table to 
match, on which Manon placed the breakfast without spreading 
a cloth. The breakfast, of monastic frugality, consisted of a 
small turbot with white sauce, potatoes, a salad, and four 
dishes of fruit : peaches, grapes, strawberries, and green 
almonds; then, by way of side-dishes, there was honey served 
in the comb as in Switzerland, beside butter, radishes, cucum- 
bers, and sardines. The meal was served in china sprigged 
with small blue cornflowers and green leaves, a pattern which 
was no doubt luxuriously fashionable in the time of Louis 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


27 


XVI., but which the increasing demands of the present day- 
have made common. 

“ It is a fast day ! ” observed Monsieur Alain. “ Since we 
go to mass every morning, you may suppose that we yield 
blindly to all the practices of the church, even the strictest.” 

“And you will begin by following our example,” added 
Madame de la Chanterie, with a side-glance at Godefroid, 
whom she had placed by her side. 

Of the fou~ boarders, Godefroid already knew the names 
of the Abbe de Veze and Monsieur Alain ; but he yet had to 
learn those of the other two gentlemen. They sat in silence, 
eating with the absorbed attention that the pious seem to 
devote to the smallest details of their meals. 

“ And does this fine fruit also come from your farm, 
madame ? ” Godefroid inquired. 

“ Yes, monsieur,” she replied. “ We have our little model 
farm, just as the Government has; it is our country house, 
about three leagues from hence, on the road to Italy, near 
Villeneuve-Saint-Georges. ” 

“ It is a little estate that belongs to us all, and will become 
the property of the survivor,” said the worthy Monsieur 
Alain. 

“Oh, it is quite inconsiderable,” added Madame de la 
Chanterie, who seemed afraid lest Godefroid should regard 
this speech as a bait. 

“There are thirty acres of arable land,” said one of the 
men unknown to Godefroid, “six acres of meadow, and an 
inclosure of about four acres of garden, in the midst of which 
our house stands; in front of it is the farm.” 

“ But such an estate must be worth above a hundred thousand 
francs,” observed Godefroid. 

“Oh, we get nothing out of it but our produce,” replied 
the same speaker. 

He was a tall man, thin and grave. At a first glance he 
seemed to have served in the army; his white hair showed 


28 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


that he was past sixty, and his face revealed great sorrows and 
religious resignation. 

The second stranger, who appeared to be a sort of com- 
pound of a master of rhetoric and a man of business, was of 
middle height, stout but active, and his face bore traces of a 
joviality peculiar to the notaries and attorneys of Paris. 

The dress of all four men was marked by the extreme neat- 
ness due to personal care; and Manon’s hand was visible in 
the smallest details of their raiment. Their coats were per- 
haps ten years old, and preserved, as a priest’s clothes are 
preserved, by the occult powers of a housekeeper and by con- 
stant use. These men wore, as it were, the livery of a system 
of life; they were all the slaves of the same thought, their 
looks spoke the same word, their faces wore an expression of 
gentle resignation, of inviting tranquillity. 

“Am I indiscreet, madame,” said Godefroid, “to ask the 
names of these gentlemen ? Iam quite prepared to tell them 
all about myself ; may I not know as much about them as 
circumstances allow ? ” 

“This,” said Madame de la Chanterie, introducing the 
tall, thin man, “ is Monsieur Nicolas ; he is a retired colonel 
of the Gendarmes, ranking as a major-general. And this 
gentleman,” she went on, turning to the little stout man, 
“was formerly councilor to the Bench of the King’s Court 
in Paris; he retired from his functions in August, 1830; his 
name is Monsieur Joseph. Though you joined us but yester- 
day, I may tell you that in the world Monsieur Nicolas bore 
the name of Marquis de Montauran, and Monsieur Joseph 
that of Lecamus, Baron de Tresnes ; but to us, as to the outer 
world, these names no longer exist. These gentlemen have 
no heirs; they have anticipated the oblivion that must fall 
on their families; they are simply Monsieur Nicolas and 
Monsieur Joseph, as you will be simply Monsieur Godefroid.” 

As he heard these two names — one so famous in the history 
of Royalism from the disaster which put an end to the rising 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


29 


of the Chouans at the beginning of the Consulate, the other so 
long respected in the records of the old Parlement — Godefroid 
could not repress a start of surprise ; but when he looked at 
these survivors from the wreck of the two greatest institutions 
of the fallen monarchy, he could not detect the slightest 
movement of feature* or change of countenance that betrayed 
a worldly emotion. These two men did not or would not 
remember what they once had been. This was Godefroid’s 
first lesson. 

“ Each name, gentlemen, is a chapter of history,” said he 
respectfully. 

“ The history of our own time,” said Monsieur Joseph, 
“ of mere ruins.” 

“You are in good company,” said Monsieur Alain, smiling. 

He can be described in two words : he was a middle-class 
Paris citizen ; a worthy man with the face of a calf, dignified 
by white hairs, but insipid with its eternal smile. 

As to the priest, the Abbe de Veze, his position was all 
sufficient. The priest who fulfills his mission is recognizable 
at the first glance when his eyes meet yours. 

What chiefly struck Godefroid from the first was the pro- 
found respect shown by the boarders to Madame de la Chan- 
terie ; all of them, even the priest, notwithstanding the sacred 
dignity conferred by his functions, behaved to her as to a 
queen. He also noted the temperance of each guest; they 
ate solely for the sake of nourishment. Madame de la Chan- 
terie, like the rest, took but a single peach and half a bunch 
of grapes ; but she begged the new-comer not to restrict him- 
self in the same way, offering him every dish in turn. 

Godefroid’s curiosity was excited to the highest pitch by 
this beginning. After the meal they returned to the drawing- 
room, where he was left to himself; Madame de la Chanterie 
and her four friends held a little privy council in a window 
recess. This conference, in which no animation was dis- 
played, lasted for about half an hour. They talked in under- 


30 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


tones, exchanging remarks which each seemed to have thought 
out beforehand. Now and again Monsieur Alain and Mon- 
sieur Joseph consulted their pocketbooks, turning over the 
leaves. 

“You will see to the faubourg,” said Madame de la Chan- 
terie to Monsieur Nicolas, who went away. 

These were the first words Godefroid could overhear., 

“And you to the Saint-Marceau Quarter,” she went on, 
addressing Monsieur Joseph. 

“ Will you take the Saint-Germain suburb and try to find 
what we need ? ” she added to the Abbe de Veze, who at once 
went off. “And you, my dear Alain,” she added with a 
smile, “ look into matters. To-day’s business is all settled,” 
said she, returning to Godefroid. 

She sat down in her armchair, and took from a little work- 
table some under-linen ready cut out, on which she began 
to sew as if working against time. 

Godefroid, lost in conjectures, and seeing in all this a 
Royalist conspiracy, took the lady’s speech as introductory, 
and, seating himself by her side, watched her closely. He 
was struck by her singular skill in sewing; while everything 
about her proclaimed the great lady, she had the peculiar 
deftness of a paid seamstress'; for every one can distinguish, 
by certain tricks of working, the habits of a professional from 
those of an amateur. 

“You sew,” said Godefroid, “as if you were used to the 
business.” 

“Alas!” she said, without looking up, “I have done it 
ere now from necessity ” 

Two large tears rose to the old woman’s eyes, and rolled 
down her cheeks on to the work she held. 

“Pray, forgive me, madame ! ” cried Godefroid. 

Madame de la Chanterie looked at her new inmate, and 
saw on his features such an expression of regret, that she 
nodded to him kindly. Then, after wiping her eyes, she 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


31 


recovered the composure that characterized her face, which 
was not so much cold as chastened. 

“You here find yourself, Monsieur Godefroid — for, as you 
know already, you will be called only by your Christian name 
— amid the wreckage from a great storm. We have all been 
stricken and wounded to the heart through family interests or 
damaged fortunes, by the forty years’ hurricane that overthrew 
royalty and religion, and scattered to the winds ihe elements 
that constituted France as it was of old. Words which seem 
but trivial bear a sting for us, and that is the reason of the 
silence that reigns here. We rarely speak of ourselves; we 
have forgotten what we were, and have found means of sub- 
stituting a new life for the old life. It was because I fancied, 
from your revelation to the Mongenods, that there was some 
resemblance between your situation and our own, that I per- 
suaded my four friends to receive you among us ; in fact, we 
were anxious to find another recluse for our convent. But 
what do you propose to do? We do not enter on solitude 
without some stock of moral purpose.” 

“ Madame, as I hear you speak, I shall be too happy to 
accept you as the arbiter of my destiny.” 

“That is speaking like a man of the world,” said she. 
“You are trying to flatter me — a woman of sixty ! My dear 
boy,” she went on, “you are, you must know, among people 
who believe firmly in God, who have all felt His hand, and 
who have given themselves up to Him almost as completely 
as do the Trappists. Have you ever observed the assurance 
of a true priest when he has given himself to the Lord, when 
he hearkens to His voice and strives to be a docile instrument 
under the fingers of Providence? He has shed all vanity, all 
self-consciousness, all the feelings which cause constant offenses 
to the worldly ; his quiescence is as complete as that of the 
fatalist, his resignation enables him to endure all things. 
The true priest — an Abbe de Veze— is like a child with h ; s 
mother; for the church, my dear sir, is a good mother. 


32 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


Well, a man may be a priest without a tonsure; not all priests 
are in orders. If we devote ourselves to doing good, we imi- 
tate the good priest, we obey God ! I am not preaching to 
you ; I do not want to convert you ; I am only explaining 
our life.” 

“Instruct me, madame,” said Godefroid, quite conquered. 
“As I would wish not to fail in any single particular of your 
rules.” 

“You would find that too much to do; you will learn by 
degrees. Above all things, never speak here of your past 
misfortunes, which are mere childish vexations as compared 
with the terrible catastrophes with which God has stricken 
those with whom you are now living ” 

All the time she spoke, Madame de la Chanterie went on 
pulling her thread through with distracting regularity; but at 
this full stop she raised her head and looked at Godefroid ; she 
saw that he was spellbound by the thrilling sweetness of her 
voice, which had indeed a sort of apostolic unction. The 
young sufferer was gazing with admiration at the really extra- 
ordinary appearance of this woman, whose face was radiant. 
A faint flush tinged her wax-white cheeks, her eyes sparkled, a 
youthful soul gave life to the wrinkles that had acquired 
sweetness, and everything about her invited affection. Gode- 
froid sat measuring the depth of the gulf that parted this 
woman from vulgar souls ; he saw that she had attained to an 
inaccessible height, whither religion had guided her; and he 
was still too much of the world not to be stung to the quick, 
not to long to go down into that gulf and climb to the sharp 
peak where Madame de la Chanterie stood, and to stand by 
her side. While he gave himself up to a thorough study of 
this woman, he related to her all the mortifications of his life, 
all he could not say at Mongenod’s, where his self-betrayal 
had been limited to a statement of his position. 

“ Poor child ! ” 

This motherly exclamation, dropping from the lips of 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


33 


Madame de la Chanterie, fell, from time to time, like healing 
balm, on the young man’s heart. 

“ What can I find to take the place of so many hopes de- 
ceived, of so much disappointed affection?” said he at last, 
looking at the lady, who seemed lost in reverie. “ I came 
here,” he went on, “to reflect and make up my mind. I 
have lost my mother — will you take her place ” 

“But,” said she, “will you show me a son’s obedience?” 

“Yes, if you can show me the tenderness that exacts it.” 

“Very well; we will try,” said she. 

Godefroid held out his hand to take that which the lady 
offered him, and raised it reverently to his lips. Madame de 
la Chanterie’s hands were admirably formed — neither wrinkled, 
nor fat, nor thin ; white enough to move a young woman to 
envy, and of a shape that a sculptor might copy. Godefroid 
had admired these hands, thinking them in harmony with the 
enchantment of her voice and the heavenly blue of her eyes. 

“Wait here,” said Madame de la Chanterie, rising and 
going into her own room. 

Godefroid was deeply agitated, and could not think to 
what he was to attribute the lady’s departure; he was not 
left long in perplexity, for she returned with a book in her 
hand. 

“Here, my dear boy,” said she, “are the prescriptions of 
a great healer of souls. When the things of every-day life have 
failed to give us the happiness we looked for, we must seek in 
a higher life, and here is the key to that new world. Read a 
chapter of this book morning and evening; but give it your 
whole attention ; study every word as if it were some foreign 
tongue. By the end of a month you will be another man. 
For twenty years now have I read a chapter every day, and 
my three friends, Nicolas, Alain, and Joseph, would no more 
omit it than they would miss going to bed and getting up 
again ; imitate them for the love of God — for my sake,” she 
said, with divine serenity and dignified confidence. 


34 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


Godefroid turned the book round and read on the back 
“ Imitation of Jesus Christ.” The old lady’s artlessness and 
youthful candor, her certainty that she was doing him good, 
confounded the ex-dandy. Madame de la Chanterie had 
exactly the manner, the intense satisfaction, of a woman who 
might offer a hundred thousand francs to a merchant on the 
verge of bankruptcy. 

“I have used this book,” she said, “for six-and-twenty 
years. God grant that its use may prove contagious ! Go 
and buy me another copy, for the hour is at hand when cer- 
tain persons are coming here who must not be seen.” 

Godefroid bowed and went up to his rooms, where he 
tossed the book on to a table, exclaiming — 

“ Poor, dear woman ! There ” 

The book, like all that are constantly used, fell open at a 
particular place. Godefroid sat down to arrange his ideas a 
little, for he had gone through more agitation that morning 
than he had in the course of the most stormy two months of 
his life ; his curiosity especially had never been so strongly 
excited. His eyes wandered mechanically, as happens with 
men when their minds are absorbed in meditation, and fell on 
the two pages that lay facing him. He read as follows : 

“CHAPTER XII. 

“Of the Royal Way of the Holy Cross.” 

He picked up the volume, and this paragraph of that grand 
book captivated his eyes as though by words of fire : 

“ He has gone before you carrying His cross, and died for 
you, that you too might have strength to carry your cross, and 
be willing to die upon the Cross 

“Go where you will, try what you will, you cannot find 
a grander way, or a safer way, than the way of the holy cross. 
Arrange and order all your life as you like or think fit, still 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


35 


you will find that you will always have something to suffer, by 
your own choice or by necessity ; and so you will always find a 
cross. For either you will have bodily pain to bear or some 
trouble of the spirit. 

“ Sometimes God will leave you to yourself, sometimes you 
will be vexed by your neighbor, and, what is harder than all, 
you will often be weary of yourself, and there is no remedy 
or solace by which you can be delivered or relieved. You 
will have to bear your trouble as long as God decrees. For 
He wishes you to learn to suffer trial without consolation, to 
yield humbly to His will, and to become humbler by means 
of tribulation.” 

“ What a book ! ” said Godefroid to himself, as he turned 
over the pages. 

And he came upon these words : 

“ When you have come to feel all trouble sweet and pleasant 
for the love of Christ, then indeed you may say that all is well 
with you ; you have made for yourself a heaven on earth.” 

Irritated by this simplicity, characteristic of strength, and 
enraged at being vanquished by this book, he shut it ; but on 
the morocco cover he saw this motto, stamped in letters of 
gold — 

“ Seek only that which is eternal, and that only.” 

“And have they found it here?” he wondered. 

He went out to purchase a handsome copy of the “ Imita- 
tion of Christ,” remembering that Madame de la Chanterie 
would want to read a chapter that evening. He went down- 
stairs and into the street. For a minute or two he remained 
standing near the gate, undecided as to which way he would 
go, and wondering in what street and at what bookseller s he 
might find the book he needed ; and he then heard the heavy 
sound of the outer gate shutting. 

Two men had just come out of the Hotel de la Chanterie 


36 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


— for the reader, if he has understood the character of the old 
house, will have recognized it as an ancient family mansion. 
Manon, when she had called Godefroid to breakfast, had 
asked him how he had slept the first night at the Hotel de la 
Chanterie, laughing as she spoke. 

Godefroid followed the two men, with no idea of spying 
on them ; and they, taking him for an indifferent passer-by, 
talked loud enough for him to hear them in those deserted 
streets. The men turned down the Rue Massillon, along by 
the side of Notre- Dame, and across the Cathedral Square. 

“Well, old man, you see how easy it is to get the coppers 
out of ’em ! You must talk their lingo, that is all.” 

“But we owe the money.” 

“Who to?” 

“ To the lady ” 

“ I should like to see myself sued for debt by that old 
image ! I would ” 

“ You would what ? You would pay her, I can tell you.” 

“You’re right there, for if I paid I could get more out of 
her afterward than I got to-day.” 

“ But wouldn’t it be better to take their advice and set up 
on the square ? ” 

“Get out!” 

“ Since she said she could find some one to stand security?” 

“ But we should have to give up life ” 

“ I am sick of ‘ life ’ — it is not life to be always working in 
the vineyards ” 

“No; but didn’t the abbe throw over old Marin the other 
day. He wouldn’t give him a thing.” 

“Ay, but old Marin wanted to play such a game as no one 
can win at that has not thousands at his back.” 

At this moment the two men, who were dressed like work- 
ing foremen, suddenly doubled, and retraced their steps to 
cross the bridge by the Hotel-Dieu to the Place Maubert ; 
Godefroid stood aside ; but seeing that he was following them 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


37 


closely, the men exchanged looks of suspicion, and they were 
evidently vexed at having spoken out so plainly. 

Godefroid was indeed all the more interested in the conver- 
sation because it reminded him of the scene between the 
Abb6 de Vdze and the workman on the evening of his first 
call. 

“What goes on at Madame de la Chanterie’s? ” he asked 
himself once more. 

As he thought over this question, he made his way to a 
bookshop in the Rue Saint-Jacques, and returned home with 
a very handsome copy of the best edition of the Imitation 
that has been published in France. 

As he walked slowly homeward to be punctual to the din- 
ner-hour, he went over in his mind all his experience of the 
morning, and found his soul singularly refreshed by it. He 
was possessed indeed by intense curiosity, but that curiosity 
paled before an indefinable wish ; he was attracted by Mad- 
ame de la Chanterie, he felt a vehement longing to attach 
himself to her, to devote himself for her, to please her and 
deserve her praise ; in short, he was aware of a Platonic 
passion ; he felt that there was unfathomed greatness in that 
soul, and that he must learn to know it thoroughly. He was 
eager to discover the secrets of the life of these pure-minded 
Catholics. And then, in this little congregation of the faith- 
ful, practical religion was so intimately allied with all that is 
most majestic in the Frenchwoman, that he resolved to do his 
utmost to be admitted to the fold. Such a vein of feeling 
would have been sudden indeed in a man of busy life ; but 
Godefroid, as we have seen, was in the position of a ship- 
wrecked wretch who clings to the most fragile bough, hoping 
that it may bear him, and his soul was ploughed land, ready 
to receive any seed. 

He found the four gentlemen in the drawing-room, and he 
presented the book to Madame de la Chanterie, saying — 

* I would not leave you without a copy for this evening.” 


38 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


“God grant,” said she, looking at the splendid volume, 
“ that this may be your last fit of elegance ! ” 

And seeing that the four men had reduced the smallest 
details of their raiment to what was strictly decent and useful, 
noticing, too, that this principle was rigorously carried out in 
every detail of the house, Godefroid understood the purpose 
of this reproof so delicately expressed. 

“ Madame,” said he, “ the men you benefited this morning 
are monsters. Without intending it, I overheard what they 
were saying as they went away, and it was full of the blackest 
ingratitude.” 

“The two iron-workers from the Rue Mouffetard,” said 
Madame de la Chanterie to Monsieur Nicolas, “ that is your 
concern ” 

“ The fish gets off the hook more than once before it is 
caught,” said Monsieur Alain, laughing. 

Madame de la Chanterie’s entire indifference on hearing of 
the immediate ingratitude of the men to whom she had cer- 
tainly given money amazed Godefroid, who became thought- 
ful. 

Monsieur Alain and the old lawyer made the dinner a 
cheerful meal ; but the soldier was constantly grave, sad, and 
cold ; his countenance bore the ineradicable stamp of a bit- 
ter sorrow, a perennial grief. Madame de la Chanterie was 
equally attentive to all. Godefroid felt that he was watched 
by these men, whose prudence was not less than their piety, 
and vanity led him to imitate their reserve, so he measured 
his words carefully. 

This first day, indeed, was far more lively than those which 
came after. Godefroid, finding himself shut out from all 
serious matters, was obliged, during the early morning and 
the evening when he was alone in his rooms, to read “ The 
Imitation of Christ,” and he finally studied it as we must 
study a book when we are imprisoned with that one alone. 
We then feel to the book as we should toward a woman with 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


39 


whom we dwelt in solitude ; we must either love or hate the 
woman ; and in the same way we must enter into the spirit 
of the author or not read ten lines of his work. 

Now it is impossible not to be held captive by “ The Imita- 
tion,” which is to dogma what action is to thought. The 
Catholic spirit thrills through it, moves and works in it, 
struggles in it hand to hand with the life of man. That book 
is a trusty friend. It speaks to every passion, to every diffi- 
culty, even to the most worldly; it answers every objection, 
it is more eloquent than any preacher, for it speaks with your 
own voice — a voice that rises from your own heart and that 
you hear with your soul. In short, it is the Gospel inter- 
preted and adapted to all times and seasons, controlling every 
situation. It is strange indeed that the church should not 
have canonized the Archbishop Gerson,* for the Holy Spirit 
certainly guided his pen. 

To Godefroid the Hotel de la Chanterie contained a woman 
as well as a book ; every day he was more and more be- 
witched by her. In her he found flowers buried under the 
snow of many winters ; he had glimpses of such a sacred 
friendship as religion sanctions, as the angels smile on — as 
bound those five, in fact — and against which no evil could 
prevail. There is a sentiment superior to all others, an affec- 
tion of soul for soul which resembles those rare blossoms that 
grow on the loftiest peaks of the earth. One or two examples 
are shown us in a century; lovers are sometimes united by it; 
and it accounts for certain faithful attachments which would 
be inexplicable by the ordinary laws of the world. In such 
an attachment there are no disappointments, no differences, 
no vanities, no rivalries, no contrasts even, so intimately 
fused are two spiritual natures. 

It was this immense and infinite feeling, the outcome of 
Catholic charity, that Godefroid was beginning to dream of. 
At times he could not believe in the spectacle before his eyes, 

* Claimed by the French to be the author of the “ Imitation of Christ.” 


40 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTOR Y. 


and he sought to find reasons for the sublime friendship between 
these five persons, wondering to find true Catholics, Christians 
of the most primitive type, in Paris, and in 1836. 

A week after entering the house, Godefroid had seen such a 
number of people come and go, he had overheard fragments 
of conversation in which such serious matters were discussed, 
that he understood that the existence of this council of five 
was full of prodigious activity. He noticed that not one of 
them slept more than six hours at most. Each of them had, 
as it were, lived through a first day before they met at the 
second breakfast. Strangers brought in or carried away sums 
of money, sometimes rather considerable. Mongenod’s 
cashier came very often, always early in the morning, so that 
his work in the bank should not be interfered with by this 
business, which was independent of the regular affairs of the 
firm. 

One evening Monsieur Mongenod himself called, and 
Godefroid observed a touch of filial familiarity in his tone to 
Monsieur Alain, mingled with the deep respect he showed to 
him, as to Madame de le Chanterie’s three other boarders. 

That evening the banker only asked Godefroid the most 
ordinary questions : Was he comfortable ? Did he mean to 
stay? and so forth, advising him to persevere in his deter- 
mination. 

“There is but one thing wanting to make me happy,” said 
Godefroid. 

“And what is that?” said the banker. 

“An occupation.” 

“An occupation ! ” cried the Abbe de Veze. “Then you 
have changed your mind ; you came to our retreat in search 
of rest.” 

“ But without prayer, which gives life to the cloister ; with- 
out meditation, which peoples the desert, rest becomes a 
disease,” said Monsieur Joseph sententiously. 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY, 


41 


“Learn bookkeeping,” said Mongenod, smiling. “In the 
course of a few months you may be of great use to my friends 
here ” 

“ Oh, with the greatest pleasure,” exclaimed Godefroid. 

The next day was Sunday. Madame de la Chanterie 
desired her boarder to give her his arm and to escort her to 
high mass. 

“ This,” she said, “ is the only thing I desire to force upon 
you. Many a time during the week I have been moved to 
speak to you of your salvation ; but I do not think the time 
has come. You would have plenty to occupy you if you 
shared our beliefs, for you would also share our labors.” 

At mass, Godefroid observed the fervency of Messieurs 
Nicolas, Joseph, and Alain. Having, during these few days, 
convinced himself of the superior intellect of these three 
men, their perspicacity, extensive learning, and lofty spirit, 
he concluded that if they could thus abase themselves, the 
Catholic religion must contain mysteries which had hitherto 
escaped his ken. 

“And, after all,” said he to himself, “it is the religion of 
Bossuet, of Pascal, of Racine, of Saint-Louis, of Louis XVI., 
of Raphael, Michael-Angelo, and Ximenes, of Bayard and 
du Guesclin — and how should such a poor creature as I com- 
pare myself with these great brains, statesmen, poets, war- 
riors?” 

Were it not that a great lesson is to be derived from these 
trivial details, it would be foolish in such times as these to 
dwell on them; but they are indispensable to the interest of 
this narrative, which the readers of our day will, indeed, find 
it hard to believe, beginning as it does by an almost ridiculous 
incident — the influence exerted by a woman of sixty over a 
young man who had tried everything and found it wanting. 

“You did not pray,” said Madame de la Chanterie to 
Godefroid as they came out of Notre-Dame. “ Not for any 
one, not even for the peace of your mother’s soul ?’ 1 


42 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


Godefroid reddened, but said nothing. 

“ Do me the pleasure,” Madame de la Chanterie went on, 
" to go to your room, and not to come down to the drawing- 
jom for an hour. And for the love of me, meditate on a 
chapter of the Imitation — the first of the Third Book, entitled 
‘Of Christ speaking within the Faithful Soul.’” 

Godefroid bowed coolly, and went upstairs. 

“The devil take ’em ail ! ” he exclaimed, now really in a 
rage. “ What the deuce do they want of me here ? What 
game are they playing ? Pshaw ! Every woman, even the 
veriest bigot, is full of tricks, and if madame ” (the name the 
boarders gave their hostess) “does not want me downstairs, it 
is because they are plotting something against me.” 

With this notion in his head, he tried to look out of his own 
window into that of the drawing-room, but the plan of the 
building did not allow of it. Then he went down one flight, 
but hastily ran up again ; for it struck him that in a house 
where the principal inhabitants held such strict principles, an 
act of espionage would lead to his immediate dismissal. Now, 
to lose the esteem of those five persons seemed to him as 
serious a matter as public dishonor. 

He waited about three-quarters of an hour, resolved to take 
Madame de la Chanterie by surprise, and to go down a little 
before the time she had named. He intended to excuse him- 
self by a fib, saying that his watch was in fault, and twenty 
minutes too fast. He went down cautiously, without a sound, 
and on reaching the drawing-room door opened it suddenly. 

He saw a man, still young but already famous, a poet whom 
he had often met in society, Victor de Vernisset, kneeling on 
one knee before Madame de la Chanterie, and kissing the hem 
of her gown. The sky falling in splinters as if it were made 
of crystal, as the ancients believed, would have amazed Gode- 
froid less than this sight. The most shocking ideas besieged 
his brain, and the reaction was even more terrible when, just 
as he was about to utter the first sarcasm that rose to his lips, 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


43 


he saw Monsieur Alain standing in a corner, counting thou- 
sand-franc notes. 

In an instant Vernisset had started to his feet. Good Mon- 
sieur Alain stared in astonishment. Madame de la Chanterie 
flashed a look that petrified Godefroid, for the doubtful ex- 
pression in the new boarder’s face had not escaped her. 

“ Monsieur is one of us,” she said to the young author, in- 
troducing Godefroid. 

“ You are a happy man, my dear fellow,” said Vernisset. 
“You are saved! But, madame,” he went on, turning to 
Madame de la Chanterie, “ if all Paris could have seen me, I 
should be delighted. Nothing can ever pay my debt to you. 
I am your slave for ever ! I am yours, body and soul. Com- 
mand me whatever you will, I will obey ; my gratitude knows 
no bounds. I owe you my life — it is yours.” 

“Come, come,” said the worthy Alain, “do not be rash. 
Only work; and, above all, never attack religion in your 
writings. And remember you are in debt.” 

He handed him an envelope bulging with the bank-notes 
he had counted out. Victor de Vernisset’s eyes filled with 
tears. He respectfully kissed Madame de la Chanterie’s hand, 
and went away after shaking hands with Monsieur Alain and 
with Godefroid. 

“ You did not obey madame,” said the good man solemnly ; 
and his face had an expression of sadness, such as Godefroid 
had not as yet seen on it. “ That is a capital crime. If it 
occurs again, we must part. It would be very hard on you, 
after having seemed worthy of our confidence ” 

“My dear Alain,” said Madame de la Chanterie, “be so 
good, for my sake, as to say nothing of this act of folly. 
We must not expect too much of a new-comer who has had no 
great sorrows, who has no religion — who has nothing, in fact, 
but great curiosity concerning every vocation, and who as yet 
does not believe in us.” 

“Forgive me, madame,” replied Godefroid. “From this 
P 


44 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


moment I will be worthy of you ; I submit to every test you 
may think necessary before initiating me into the secret of 
your labors ; and if monsieur the abbe will undertake to en- 
lighten me, I give myself up to him, soul and reason.” 

These words made Madame de la Chanterie so happy that a 
faint flush rose to her cheeks, she clasped Godefroid’s hand 
and pressed it, saying, with strange emotion, “That is well !” 

In the evening, after dinner, Godefroid saw a vicar-general 
of the diocese of Paris, who came to call, two canons, two 
retired mayors of Paris, and a lady who devoted herself to the 
poor. There was no gambling ; the conversation was general, 
and cheerful without being futile. 

A visitor who greatly surprised Godefroid was the Countess 
of Saint-Cygne, one of the loftiest stars of the aristocratic 
spheres, whose drawing-room was quite inaccessible to the 
citizen class and to parvenus. The mere presence of this 
great lady in Madame de la Chanterie’s room was sufficiently 
amazing ; but the way in which the two women met and 
treated each other was to Godefroid quite inexplicable, for it 
bore witness to an intimacy and constant intercourse which 
proved the high merit of Madame de la Chanterie. Madame 
de Saint-Cygne was gracious and friendly to her friend’s four 
friends, and very respectful to Monsieur Nicolas. 

As may be seen, social vanity still had a hold on Godefroid, 
who, hitherto undecided, now determined to yield, with or 
without conviction, to everything Madame de la Chanterie 
and her friends might require of him, to succeed in being 
affiliated by them to their Order, or initiated into their 
secrets, promising himself that until then he would not defi- 
nitely commit himself. 

On the following day, he went to the bookkeeper recom- 
mended by Madame de la Chanterie, agreed with him as to 
the hours when they were to work together, and so disposed 
of all his time ; for the Abbe de Veze was to catechise him in 
the morning, he spent two hours of every day learning book- 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


45 


keeping, and between breakfast and dinner he worked at the 
exercises and imaginary commercial correspondence set him 
by his master. 

Some few days thus passed, during which Godefroid learned 
the charm of a life of which every hour has its employment. 
The recurrence of the same duties at fixed hours, and perfect 
regularity, sufficiently account for many happy lives, and 
prove how deeply the founders of religious orders had medi- 
tated on human nature. Godefroid, who had made up his 
mind to learn of the Abbe de Veze, had already begun to feel 
qualms as to his future life, and to discover that he was igno- 
rant of the importance of religious matters. 

Finally, day by day, Madame de la Chanterie, with whom 
he always sat for about an hour after the second breakfast, 
revealed some fresh treasures of her nature; he had never con- 
ceived of goodness so complete, so all-embracing. A woman 
as old as Madame de la Chanterie seemed to be has none of 
the triviality of a young woman ; she is a friend who may 
offer you every feminine dainty, who displays all the grace 
and refinement with which Nature inspires woman to please 
man, but who no longer asks for a return ; she may be exe- 
crable or exquisite, for all her demands on life are buried 
beneath the skin — or are dead; and Madame de la Chanterie 
was exquisite. She seemed never to have been young ; her 
looks never spoke of the past. Far from allaying his curiosity, 
Godefroid’s increased intimacy with this beautiful character, 
and the discoveries he made day by day, increased his desire 
to know something of the previous history of the woman he 
now saw as a saint. Had she ever loved ? Had she been 
married? Had she been a mother? There was nothing in 
her suggestive of the old maid ; she had all the elegance of a 
woman of birth ; and her strong health, and the extraordinary 
charm of her conversation, seemed to reveal a heavenly life, a 
sort of ignorance of the world. Excepting the worthy and 
cheerful Alain, all these persons had known suffering; but Mon- 


46 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


sieur Nicolas himself seemed to give the palm of martyrdom 
to Madame de la Chanterie ; nevertheless, the memory of her 
sorrows was so entirely suppressed by Catholic resignation, 
and her secret occupations, that she seemed to have been 
always happy. 

“ You are the life of your friends,” said Godefroid to her 
one day. “You are the bond that unites them; you are the 
housekeeper, so to speak, of a great work ; and as we are all 
mortal, I cannot but wonder what would become of your as- 
sociation without you.” 

“Yes, that is what they fear; but Providence — to whom 
we owe our bookkeeper,” said she with a smile — “will 
doubtless provide. However, I shall think it over ” 

“And will your bookkeeper soon find himself at work on 
your business?” asked Godefroid, laughing. 

“That must depend upon himself,” she said with a sweet 
smile. 

“ If he is sincerely religious, truly pious, has not the smallest 
conceit, does not trouble his head about the wealth of the 
establishment, and endeavors to rise superior to petty social 
considerations by soaring on the wings God has bestowed on 
us ” 

“ Which are they ? ” 

“ Simplicity and purity,” replied Madame de la Chanterie. 
“ Your ignorance proves that you neglect reading your 
book,” she added, laughing at the innocent trap she had 
laid to discover whether Godefroid read the “ Imitation of 
Christ.” “Soak your mind in Saint Paul’s great chapter on 
Charity. It is not you who will be devoted to us, but we to 
you,” she said with a lofty look, “and it will be your part to 
keep account of the greatest riches ever possessed by any 
sovereign ; you will have the same enjoyment of them as we 
have ; and let me tell you, if you remember the Thousand 
and One Nights, that the treasures of Aladdin are as nothing 
in comparison with ours. Indeed, for a year past, we have 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


47 


not known what to do ; it was too much for us. We needed 
a bookkeeper.” 

As she spoke she studied Godefroid’s face ; he knew not 
what to think of this strange confidence ; but the scene be- 
tween Madame de la Chanterie and the elder Madame Mon- 
genod had often recurred to him, and he hesitated between 
doubt and belief. 

“ Yes, you would be very fortunate !” said she. 

Godefroid was so consumed by curiosity, that from that 
instant he resolved to undermine the reserve of the four 
friends, and to ask them about themselves. Now, of all 
Madame de la Chanterie’s boarders, the one who most 
attracted Godefroid, and who was the most fitted in all ways 
to invite the sympathy of people of every class, was the 
kindly, cheerful, and unaffected Monsieur Alain. By what 
means had Providence guided this simple-minded being to 
this secular convent, where the votaries lived under rules as 
strictly observed, in perfect freedom and in the midst of Paris, 
as though they were under the sternest of priors? What 
drama, what catastrophe, had made him turn aside from his 
road through the world to take a path so hard to tread across 
the troubles of a great city? 

One evening Godefroid determined to call on his neighbor, 
with the purpose of satisfying a curiosity which was more 
excited by the incredibility of any catastrophe in such a 
man’s life than it could have been by the expectation of listen- 
ing to some terrible episode in the life of a pirate. 

On hearing the reply : “ Come in,” in answer to two 
modest raps on the door, Godefroid turned the key, which 
was always in the lock, and found Monsieur Alain seated in 
his chimney-corner, reading a chapter of the Imitation before 
going to bed by the light of two wax-candles with green 
shades, such as whist-players use. The worthy man had on 
kis trousers and a dressing-gown of thick gray flannel ; his 


48 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


feet were raised to the level of the fire on a hassock worked 
in cross-stitch — as his slippers were also — by Madame de la 
Chanterie. His striking old head, with its circlet of white 
hair, almost resembling that of an old monk, stood out, a 
lighter spot against the brown background of an immense 
armchair. 

Monsieur Alain quietly laid his book, with its worn corners, 
on the little table with twisted legs, while with the other hand 
he waved the young man to the second armchair, removing 
his glasses, which nipped the end of his nose. 

“Are you unwell, that you have come down so late?” he 
asked. 

“ Dear Monsieur Alain,” Godefroid frankly replied, “ I am 
a prey to curiosity which a single word from you will prove 
to be very innocent or very indiscreet, and that is enough to 
show you in what spirit I shall venture to ask a question.” 

“Oh, ho! and what is it?” said he, with an almost mis- 
chievous sparkle in his eye. 

“ What was the circumstance that induced you to lead the 
life you lead here? For to embrace such a doctrine of utter 
renunciation a man must be disgusted with the world, must 
have been deeply wounded, or have wounded others.” 

“ Why, why, my boy?” replied the old man, and his full 
lips parted in one of those smiles which made his ruddy mouth 
one of the most affectionate that the genius of a painter could 
conceive of. “ May he not feel touched to the deepest pity 
by the sight of the woes to be seen within the walls of Paris? 
Did Saint Vincent de Paul need the goad of remorse or of 
wounded vanity to devote himself to foundling babes?” 

“ Such an answer shuts my mouth all the more effectually, 
because if ever a soul was a match for that of tjie Christian 
hero, it is yours,” replied Godefroid. 

In spite of the thickening given by age to his yellow and 
wrinkled face, the old man colored crimson, for he might 
seem to have invited the eulogium, though his well-known 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


49 


modesty forbade the idea that he had thought of it. Gode- 
froid knew full well that Madame de la Chanterie’s guests had 
no taste for this kind of incense. And yet good Monsieur 
Alain’s guilelessness was more distressed by this scruple than 
a young maid would have been by some evil suggestion. 

“Though I am far from resembling him in spirit,” replied 
Monsieur Alain, “ I certainly am like him in appearance ” 

Godefroid was about to speak, but was checked by a gesture 
from the old man, whose nose had in fact the bulbous appear- 
ance of the saint’s, and whose face, much like that of some 
old vine-dresser, was the very duplicate of the coarse, common 
countenance of the founder of the Foundling Hospital. “As 
to that, you are right,” he went on; “ my vocation to this 
work was the result of an impulse of repentance in conse- 
quence of an adventure ” 

'‘An adventure! You!” said Godefroid softly, who at 
this word forgot what he had been about to say. 

“ Oh, the story I have to tell will seem to you a mere trifle, 
a foolish business; but before the tribunal of conscience it 
looked different. If, after having heard me, you persist in 
your wish to join in our labors, you will understand that feel- 
ings are in inverse proportion to our strength of soul, and 
that a matter which would not trouble a Freethinker may 
greatly weigh on a feeble Christian.” 

After this prelude, the neophyte’s curiosity had risen to an 
indescribable pitch. What could be the crime of this good 
soul whom Madame de la Chanterie had nicknamed her Pas- 
chal Lamb? It was as exciting as a book entitled “The 
Crimes of a Sheep.” Sheep, perhaps, are ferocious to the 
grass and flowers. If we listen to one of the mildest republi- 
cans of our day, the best creatures living are cruel to some- 
thing. But good Monsieur Alain ! He, who, like Sterne’s 
Uncle Toby, would not crush a fly when it had stung him 
twenty times ! This beautiful soul — tortured by repentance! 

These reflections filled up the pause made by the old man 
4 


50 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY, 


after he had said, “ Listen, then ! ” and during which he 
pushed forward the cushion under Godefroid ’s feet that they 
might share it. 

“ I was a little over thirty,” said he; “ it was in the year 
’98, so far as I recollect, a time when young men of thirty 
had the experience of men of sixty. One morning, a little 
before my breakfast hour at nine o’clock, my old housekeeper 
announced one of the few friends left to me by the storms of 
the Revolution. So my first words were to ask him to break- 
fast. My friend, whose name was Mongenod, a young fellow 
of eight-and-twenty, accepted, but with some hesitancy. I 
had not seen him since 1793 ” 

“ Mongenod ! ” cried Godefroid, “ the ?” 

“ If you want to know the end of the story before the be- 
ginning,” the old man put in with a smile, “ how am I to 
tell it?” 

Godefroid settled himself with an air that promised perfect 
silence. 

“When Mongenod had seated himself,” the good man 
went on, “ I observed that his shoes were dreadfully worn. 
His spotted stockings had been so often washed that it was 
hard to recognize that they were of silk. His knee-breeches 
were of nankin-colored kerseymere, so faded as to tell of 
long wear, emphasized by stains in many places, and their 
buckles, instead of steel, seemed to me to be of common iron ; 
his shoe-buckles were a match. His flowered white vest, yel- 
low with long use, his shirt with its frayed-pleated frill, re- 
vealed extreme though decent poverty. Finally, his coat — a 
houpptlande, as we called such a coat, with a single collar like 
a very short cape — was enough to assure me that my friend 
had fallen on bad times. This coat of nut-brown cloth, ex- 
tremely threadbare, and brushed with excessive care, had a 
rim of grease or powder round the collar, and buttons off 
which the plating had worn to the copper. In fact, the whole 
outfit was so wretched that I could not bear to look at it. 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


51 


His crush hat — a semicircular structure of beaver, which it was 
then customary to carry under one arm instead of wearing it 
on the head — must have survived many changes of govern- 
ment. 

“ However, my friend had no doubt just spent a few sous to 
have his head dressed by a barber, for he was freshly shaven, 
and his hair, fastened into a knob with a comb, was luxuriously 
powdered, and smelt of pomatum. I could see two chains 
hanging parallel out of his fobs, chains of tarnished steel, but 
no sign of the watches within. It was winter, but Mongenod 
had no cloak, for some large drops of melting snow fallen 
from the eaves under which he had walked for shelter lay on 
the collar of his coat. When he drew off his rabbit-fur gloves 
and I saw his right hand, I could perceive the traces of some 
kind of hard labor. 

“Now, his father, an advocate in the higher court, had left 
him some little fortune — five or six thousand francs a year. 
I at once understood that Mongenod had come to borrow 
of me. I had in a certain hiding-place two hundred louis in 
gold (about one thousand dollars), an enormous sum at that 
time, when it represented I know not how many hundred 
thousand francs in paper assignats. 

“ Mongenod and I had been schoolfellows at the College des 
Grassins, and we had been thrown together again in the same 
lawyer’s office — an honest man, the worthy Bordin. When 
two men have spent their boyhood together and shared the 
follies of their youth, there is an almost sacred bond of sym- 
pathy between them ; the man’s voice and look stir certain 
chords in your heart, which never vibrate but to the particular 
memories that he can rouse. Even if you have some cause to 
complain of such a comrade, that does not wipe out every 
claim of friendship, and between us there had not been the 
slightest quarrel. 

“In 1787, when his father died, Mongenod had been a 
richer man than myself; and though I had never borrowed 


52 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


from him, I had owed to him certain pleasures which my 
father’s strictness would have prohibited. But for my friend’s 
generosity, I should not have seen the first performance of the 
‘ Marriage of Figaro.* 

“ Mongenod was at that time what was called a finished 
gentleman, a man about town and attentive to ‘the ladies.’ 
I constantly reproved him for his too great facility in making 
friends and obliging them ; his purse was constantly open, he 
lived liberally, he would have stood surety for you after meet- 
ing you twice. Dear me, dear me ! You have started me on 
reminiscences of my youth!” cried Monsieur Alain, with a 
bright smile at Godefroid as he paused. 

“You are not vexed with me?” said Godefroid. 

“ No, no. And you may judge by the minute details I 
am giving you how large a place the event filled in my life. 
Mongenod, with a good heart and plenty of courage, some- 
thing of a Voltairean, was inclined to play the fine gentle- 
man,” Monsieur Alain went on. “His education at the 
Grassins, where noblemen’s sons were to be met, and his 
adventures of gallantry, had given him the polish of men oi 
rank, in those days termed Aristocrats. So you may imagine 
how great was my consternation at observing in Mongenod 
such signs of poverty as degraded him in my eyes from the 
elegant young Mongenod I had known in 1787, when my 
eyes wandered from his face to examine his clothes. 

“ However, at that time of general public penury, some 
wily persons assumed an appearance of wretchedness; and as 
others no doubt had ample reasons for assuming a disguise, I 
hoped for some explanation, and invited it. 

“ ‘ What a plight you are in, my dear Mongenod ! ’ said I, 
accepting a pinch of snuff, which he offered me from a box ot 
imitation gold. 

“ ‘ Sad enough ! ’ replied he. ‘ I have but one friend left 
— and you are that friend. I have done everything in the 
world to avoid coming to this point, but I have come to ask 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


53 


you to lend me a hundred louis. It is a large sum,’ said he, 
noticing my surprise, ‘ but if you lend me no more than fifty, 
I shall never be able to repay you ; whereas, if I should fail 
in what I am undertaking, I shall still have fifty louis to try 
some other road to fortune, and I do not yet know what in- 
spiration despair may bring me.’ 

“ ‘Then, have you nothing?’ said I. 

“ ‘I have,’ said he, hiding a tear, ‘just five sous left out of 
my last piece of silver. To call on you, I had my boots 
cleaned and my head dressed. I have the clothes on my 
back. But,’ he went on, with a desperate shrug, ‘ I owe my 
landlady a thousand crowns in assignats, and the man at the 
cookstore yesterday refused to trust me. So I have nothing — 
nothing.’ 

“‘And what do you propose doing?’ said I, insistently 
meddling with his private affairs. 

“ ‘ To enlist if you refuse to help me.* 

“ ‘ You, a soldier ! You — Mongenod ? ’ 

“.‘I will get killed, or I will be General Mongenod.* 

“ ‘ Well,’ said I, really moved, ‘ eat your breakfast in 

peace ; I have a hundred louis ’ 

“And here,” said the good man, looking slily at Godefroid, 
“ I thought it necessary to tell a lender’s little fib. 

“ ‘ But it is all I have in the world,’ I said to Mongenod. 
‘ I was waiting till the Funds had gone down to the lowest 
mark to invest my money, but I will place it in your hands, 
and you may regard me as your partner ; I leave it to your 
conscience to repay me the whole in due time and place. An 
honest man’s conscience,’ I added, ‘ is the best possible secur- 
ity.’ 

“Mongenod looked hard at me as I spoke, seeming to 
stamp my words on his heart. He held out his right hand, I 
gave him my left, and we clasped hands — I, greatly moved, 
and he, without restraining two tears which now trickled down 
his thin cheeks. The sight of those tears wrung my heart; 


54 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


and I was still more unnerved when, forgetful of everything 
in such a moment, Mongenod, to wipe them away, pulled out 
a ragged bandana. 

“ ‘Wait here,’ said I, running off to my hidden store, my 
heart as full as though I had heard a woman confess that she 
loved me. I returned with two rolls of fifty louis each. 

“ ‘ Here — count them.’ 

“But he would not count them; he looked about him for 
a writing-table in order, as he said, to give me a receipt, i 
positively refused to have one. 

“ ‘ If I were to die,’ said I, ‘ my heirs would worry you. 
This is a matter between you and me.’ 

“ Finding me so true a friend, Mongenod presently lost 
the haggard and anxious expression he had worn on entering, 
and became cheerful. My housekeeper gave us oysters, white 
wine, an omelette, kidneys a la brochette (spitted), and the 
remains of a Chartres pasty, sent me by my mother ; a little 
dessert, coffee, and West Indian liqueur. Mongenod, who 
had fasted for two days, was the better for it. We sat till 
three in the afternoon talking over our life before the Revolu- 
tion, the best friends in the world. 

“Mongenod told me how he had lost his fortune. In the 
first instance, the reduction of the dividends on the Hotel de 
Ville had deprived him of two-thirds of his income, for his 
father had invested the larger part of his fortune in municipal 
securities; then, after selling his house in the Rue de Savoie, he 
had been obliged to accept payment in assignats ; he had then 
taken it into his head to run a newspaper, ‘La Senti-nelle,* 
and at the end of six months was forced to fly. At the present 
moment all his hopes hung on the success of a comic opera 
called ‘ Les Peruviens.’ This last confession made me 
quake. Mongenod, as an author, having spent his all on the 
‘ Sentinelle,’ and living no doubt at the theatre, mixed up 
with Feydeau’s singers, with musicians, and the motley world 
behind the curtain, did not seem to me like the same, like my 
































































“/ AM ALAIN, MONGENOD’S FRIEND.” 


I 







THE SEAMY SIDE OE HISTORY. 


55 


Mongenod. I shuddered a little. But how could I get back 
my hundred louis ? I could see the two rolls, one in each fob 
like the barrel of a pistol. 

“Mongenod went away. When I found myself alone, no 
longer face to face with his bitter and cruel poverty, I began 
to reflect in spite of myself ; I was sober again. * Monge- 
nod, ’ thought I to myself, ‘ has no doubt sunk as low as pos- 
sible ; he has acted a little farce for my benefit ! * His glee 
when he saw me calmly hand over so vast a sum now struck 
me as that of a stage rascal cheating some Geronte. I ended 
where I ought to have begun, resolved to make some inquiries 
about my friend Mongenod, who had written his address on 
the back of a playing-card. 

“A feeling of delicacy kept me from going to see him the 
next day ; he might have ascribed my haste to distrust of him. 
Two days after I found my whole time absorbed by various 
business ; and it was not, in fact, till a fortnight had elapsed 
that, seeing no more of Mongenod, I made my way from La 
Croix-Rouge, where I then lived, to the Rue des Moineaux, 
where he lived. 

“ Mongenod was lodged in a furnished house of the meanest 
description ; but his landlady was a very decent woman, the 
widow of a farmer-general who had died on the scaffold. 
She, completely ruined, had started with a few louis the pre- 
carious business of letting rooms. Since then she has rented 
seven houses in the neighborhood of Saint-Roch and made a 
fortune. 

“ ‘ Citizen Mongenod is out/ said she. ‘ But there is some 
one at home.’ 

“This excited my curiosity. I climbed to the sixth floor. 
A charming young woman opened the door ! Oh ! A per- 
son of exquisite beauty, who, looking at me doubtfully, stood 
behind the partly opened door. 

“ f I am Alain/ said I, ‘ Mongenod’s friend.’ 

“At once the door was wide open, and I went into a hor* 


56 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


rible garret, which the young woman had, however, kept 
scrupulously clean. She pushed forward a chair to the hearth 
piled with ashes, but with no fire, where in one corner I saw a 
common earthenware foot-warmer. The cold was icy. 

‘“Iam glad, indeed, monsieur/ said she, taking my hands 
and pressing them warmly, ‘ to be able to express my grati- 
tude, for you are our deliverer. But for you I might never 
have seen Mongenod again. He would have — God knows — 
have thrown himself into the river. He was desperate when 
he set out to see you.’ 

“ As I looked at the young lady I was greatly astonished to 
see that she had a handkerchief bound about her head ; and 
below its folds at the back and on the temples there was a sort 
of black shadow. Studying it attentively, I discovered that 
her head was shaved. 

“ 1 Are you ill ? ’ I asked, noticing this strange fact. 

“ She glanced at herself in a wretched, dirty pier-glass, and 
colored, while tears rose to her eyes. 

“ 4 Yes, monsieur/ said she hastily ; ‘ I had dreadful head- 
aches; I was obliged to cut off my hair, which fell to my 
heels * 

“ ‘ Have I the honor of speaking to Madame Mongenod ? ’ 
I asked. 

“ ‘ Yes, monsieur/ said she, with a really heavenly ex- 
pression. 

“I made my bow to the poor little lady, and went down- 
stairs, intending to make the landlady give me some informa- 
tion, but she was gone out. It struck me that the young 
woman had sold her hair to buy bread. I went off at once to 
a wood merchant, and sent in half a load of wood, begging 
the carter and the sawyers to give the lady a receipted bill 
in the name of Mongenod. 

“ And there ends the phase of my life which I long called 
my foolish stage,” said Monsieur Alain, clasping his hands and 
uplifting them a little with a repentant gesture. 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


57 


Godefroid could not help smiling ; but he was, as will be 
seen, quite wrong to smile. 

“Two days later,” the good man went on, “I met one of 
those men who are neither friends nor strangers — persons 
whom we see from time to time, in short, an acquaintance, as 
we say — a Monsieur Barillaud, who, as we happened to speak 
of * Les Penmens,’ proclaimed himself a friend of the au- 
thor’s. 

“‘Thou know’st Citizen Mongenod?’ said I — for at that 
time we were still required by law to address each other with 
the familiar tu ,” said he to Godefroid in a parenthesis. 

“ The citizen looked at me,” said Monsieur Alain, resuming 
the thread of his story, and exclaimed — 

“ ‘ I only wish I had never known him, for he has borrowed 
money of me many a time, and is so much my friend as not 
to return it. He is a queer fellow ! the best old boy alive, but 
full of illusions? An imagination of fire. I will do him 
justice ; he does not mean to be dishonest, only as he is always 
deceiving himself about a thousand things, he is led into con- 
duct that is not altogether straight.’ 

“ ‘ How much does he owe you? ’ 

“ ‘ Oh, a few hundred crowns. He is a regular sieve. No 
one knows where his money goes, for he, perhaps, does not 
know that himself.’ 

“ ‘ Has he any expedients?’ 

“ ‘Oh, dear, yes ! ’ said Barillaud, laughing. ‘At this mo- 
ment he is talking of buying up land among the wild men in 
the United States.’ 

“I went away with this drop of vitriol shed by slander on 
my heart to turn all my best feelings sour. I went to call on 
my old master in the law, who was always my counselor. As 
soon as I had told him the secret of my loan to Mongenod and 
the way in which I had acted : 

“ ‘What,’ cried he, ‘ is it a clerk of mine that can behave 
so? You should have put him off a day and have come to me. 


58 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


Then you would have known that I had shown Mongenod the 
door. He has already borrowed from me in the course of a 
year more than a hundred crowns in silver, an enormous sum ! 
And only three days before he went to breakfast with you, he 
met me in the street and described his misery in such desperate 
language that I gave him two louis.’ 

“ 4 Well, if I am the dupe of a clever actor, so much the 
worse for him rather than for me ! ’ said I. ‘ But what is to 
be done? ’ 

“ ‘At any rate, you must try to get some acknowledgment 
out of him, for a debtor however worthless may recover him- 
self, and then you may be paid.’ 

“ Thereupon Bordin took out of one of the drawers of his 
table a wrapper on which was written the name of Mongenod ; 
he showed me three acknowledgments, each for a hundred 
livres. 

“ ‘ The first time he comes,’ said he, ‘ I shall make him add 
on the interest and the two louis I gave him, and whatever 
money he asks for ; and then he must sign an acceptance and 
a statement, saying that interest accrues from the day of the 
first loan. That, at any rate, will be all in order ; I shall find 
some means of getting paid.’ 

“‘Well, then,’ said I to Bordin, ‘cannot you put me as 
much in order as yourself? For you are an honest man, and 
what you do will be right.’ 

“ ‘ In this way I remain the master of the field,’ replied the 
lawyer. ‘ When a man behaves as you have done, he is at 
the mercy of another who may simply make game of him. 
Now I don’t choose to be laughed at. A retired public prose- 
cutor of the Chatelet ! Bless me, what next ? Every man to 
whom you lend money as recklessly as you lent it to Mon- 
genod, sooner or later thinks of it as his own. It is no longer 
your money; it is his money ; you are his creditor, a very in- 
convenient person. The debtor then tries to be quit of you 
by a compromise with his conscience, and seventy-five out 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


59 


of every hundred will try to avoid meeting you again to the 
end of his days * 

“ ‘Then you look for no more than twenty-five per cent, of 
honest men ? ’ 

“ ‘ Did I say so?* said he, with an ironical smile. ‘ That 
is a large allowance ! * 

“A fortnight later I had a note from Bordin desiring me to 
call on him to fetch my receipt. I went. 

“‘I tried to snatch back fifty louis for you/ said he. I 
had told him all about my conversation with Mongenod. 
‘ But the birds are flown. You may say good-by to your 
yellow-boys ! Your canary-birds have fled to warmer climes. 
We have a very cunning rascal to deal with. Did he not 
assure me that his wife and his father-in-law had set out for 
the United States with sixty of your louis to buy land, and 
that he intended to join them there? To make a fortune, as 
he said, so as to return to pay his debts, of which he handed 
me the schedule drawn out in due form ; for he begged me to 
keep myself informed as to what became of his creditors. 
Here is the schedule,’ added Bordin, showing me a wrapper 
on which was noted the total. ‘ Seventeen thousand francs 
in hard cash ! With such a sum as that a house might be 
bought worth two thousand crowns a year.’ 

“ After replacing the packet, he gave me a bill of exchange 
for a sum equivalent to a hundred louis in gold, stated in 
assignats, with a letter in which Mongenod acknowledged the 
debt with interest on a hundred louis d’or. 

“ ‘ So now I am all safe ? ’ said I to Bordin. 

“ ‘ He will not deny the debt,’ replied my old master. 
‘ But where there are no effects, even the King — that is to say, 
the Directory — has no rights.’ 

“ I thereupon left him. Believing myself to have been 
robbed by a trick that evades the law, I withdrew my esteem 
from Mongenod, and was very philosophically resigned. 

“ It is not without a reason that I dwell on these common 


60 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


place and apparently unimportant details,” the good man 
went on, looking at Godefroid. “ I am trying to show you 
how I was led to act as most men act, blindly, and in con- 
tempt of certain rules which even savages do not disregard in 
the most trifling matters. Many men would justify themselves 
by the authority of Bordin ; but at this day I feel that I had 
no excuse. As soon as we are led to condemn one of our 
fellows, and to refuse him our esteem for life, we ought to 
rely solely on our own judgment — and even then ! — ought we 
to set up our own feelings as a tribunal before which to arraign 
our neighbor ? Where would the law be ? What should be 
our standard of merit ? Would not a weakness in me be 
strength in my neighbor ? So many men, so many different 
circumstances would there be for each deed ; for there are no 
two identical sets of conditions in human existence. Society 
alone has the right of reproving its members ; for I do not 
grant it that of punishing them. A mere reprimand is suffi- 
cient and brings with it cruelty enough. 

“So as I listened to the haphazard opinions of a Parisian, 
admiring my former teacher’s acumen, I condemned Monge- 
nod,” the good man went on, after drawing from his narrative 
this noble moral. 

“The performance of * Les Penmens’ was announced. I 
expected to have a ticket for the first night ; I conceived my- 
self in some way his superior. As a result of his indebtedness, 
my friend seemed to me a vassal who owed me many things 
beside the interest on my money. We are all alike ! 

“ Not only did Mongenod send me no ticket, but I saw 
him at a distance coming along the dark passage under the 
Theatre Feydeau, well dressed — nay, almost elegant; he af- 
fected not to see me; then, when he had passed me, and I 
thought I would run after him, he had vanished down some 
cross -passage. This irritated me extremely ; and my annoy- 
ance, far from being transient and subsiding, only increased 
as time went on. 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


61 


“ This was why. A few days after this incident I wrote to 
Mongenod much in these words : 

“ ‘My Friend: — You should not regard me as indifferent 
to anything that can happen to you, whether for good or 
ill. Does the “Penmens” come up to your expectations? 
You forgot me — you had every right to do so — at the first 
performance, when I should have applauded you heartily ! 
However, I hope, all the same, that you may find Peru in the 
piece, for I can invest my capital, and I count on you when 
the bill falls due. Your friend, 

“ ‘Alain.* 

“ After waiting for two weeks and receiving no answer, I 
called in the Rue des Moineaux. The landlady told me that 
the little wife had, in fact, set out with her father, at the date 
named by Mongenod to Bordin. Mongenod always left his 
garret early in the morning, and did not come in till late at 
night. Another fortnight passed ; I wrote another letter in 
these terms : 

“ ‘ My dear Mongenod : — I see nothing of you ; you do 
not answer my notes ; I cannot at all understand your conduct; 
and if I were to behave so to you, what would you think of 
me?’ 

“I did not sign myself ‘Your friend.* I wrote ‘With 
best regards.* 

“A month slipped by; no news of Mongenod. The 
‘ Peruviens * had not obtained so great a success as Mon- 
genod had counted on. I paid for a seat at the twentieth 
performance, and I found a small house. And yet Madame 
Scio was very fine in it. I was told in the green-room that 
there would be a few more performances of the piece. I went 
seven times to call on Mongenod; he was never at home, and 


62 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


each time I left my name with the landlady. So then I wrote 
again : 

“ ‘ Monsieur, if you do not wish to lose my respect after 
forfeiting my friendship, you will henceforth treat me as a 
stranger — that is to say, with civility — and you will tell me 
whether you are prepared to pay me when your note of hand 
falls due. I shall act in accordance with your reply. Yours 
faithfully, Alain.’ 

“No reply. It was now 1799 ; a year had elapsed all but 
two months. 

“ When the bill fell due I went to see Bordin. Bordin 
took the note of hand, and then began legal proceedings. The 
reverses experienced by the French armies had had such a 
depressing effect on the Funds that five francs a year could be 
purchased for seven francs. Thus, for a hundred louis in 
gold, I might have had nearly fifteen hundred francs a year. 
Every morning, as I read the paper over my cup of coffee, I 
would exclaim — 

“ * Confound that Mongenod ! But for him, I could have 
a thousand crowns a year ! ’ 

“ Mongenod had become my chronic aversion ; I thundered 
at him even when I was walking in the street. 

“ * Bordin is after him ! * said I to myself. ‘ He will catch 
him — and serve him right ! 9 

“ My rage expended itself in imprecations ; I cursed the 
man ; I believed him capable of any crime. Yes, Monsieur 
Barillaud was quite right in what he said. 

“ Well, one morning my debtor walked in, no more discon- 
certed than if he had not owed me a centime ; and I, when 
I saw him, I felt all the shame that should have been his. I 
was like a criminal caught in the act ; I was quite ill at ease. 
The 1 8th of Brumaire* was past, everything was going on 

* Second month of the Republican Kalendar, Oct. 25 to Nov. 21. 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


6i 5 


well, and Bonaparte had set out to fight the battle of Ma- 
rengo. 

“‘It is unlucky, monsieur,* said I, ‘that I should owe 
your visit solely to the intervention of a bailiff.* 

“ Mongenod took a chair and sat down. 

“ ‘I have come to tell you,’ said he, with the familiar tu , 
‘that I cannot possibly pay you.* 

“‘You have lost me the chance of investing my money 
before the arrival of the First Consul — at that time I could 

have made a little fortune ’ 

“ ‘ I know it, Alain,* said he ; ‘I know it. But what will 
you get by prosecuting me for debt and plunging me deeper 
by loading me with costs? I have letters from my father-in- 
law and my wife ; they have bought some land and sent me 
the bill for the necessaries of the house ; I have had to 
spend all I had in those purchases. Now, and nobody can 
hinder me — I mean to sail by a Dutch vessel from Flushing, 
whither I have sent all my small possessions. Bonaparte 
has won the battle of Marengo, peace will be signed, and 
I can join my family without fear — for my dear little wife was 
expecting a baby.’ 

“ ‘ And so you have sacrificed me to your own interests?* 
cried I. 

“ ‘ Yes,* said he ; ‘I thought you my friend.* 

“At that moment I felt small as compared to Mongenod, 
so sublime did that speech seem to me, so simple and grand. 

“ ‘ Did I not tell you so,’ he went on ; ‘ was I not absolutely 
frank with you — here, on this very spot? I came to you, 
Alain, as being the only man who would appreciate me. 
Fifty louis would be wasted, I told you ; but if you lent me a 
hundred, I would repay them. I fixed no date, for how can 
I tell when my long struggle with poverty will come to an 
end ? You were my last friend. All my friends, even our 
old master Bordin, despised me simply because I wanted to 
borrow money of them. Oh ! Alain, you can never know the 


64 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


dreadful feelings that grip the heart of an honest man fighting 
misfortune when he goes into another man’s house to ask for 

help ! and all that follows I hope you may never know 

them ; they are worse than the anguish of death ! 

“ ‘ You have written me certain letters which, from me 
under similar circumstances, would have struck you as odious. 
You expected things of me that were out of my power. You 
are the only man to whom I attempt to justify myself. In 
spite of your severity, and though you ceased to be my friend 
and became only my creditor from the day when Bordin asked 
me for an acknowledgment of your loan, thus discrediting the 
handsome agreement we ourselves had come to, here, shaking 
hands on it with tears in our eyes ! Well, I have forgotten 
everything but that morning’s work. 

“ 1 It is in memory of that hour that I have come now to 
say, “ You know not what misfortune is ; do not rail at it ! I 
have not had an hour, not a second, to write you in reply ! 
Perhaps you would have liked me to come and pay you com- 
pliments? You might as well expect a hare, harassed by dogs 
and hunters, to rest in a clearing and crop the grass ! I sent 
you no ticket! No; I had not enough to satisfy those on 
whom my fate depended. A novice in the theatrical world, I 
was the prey of musicians, actors, singers, the orchestra. To 
enable me to join my family over seas, and buy what they 
need, I sold the ‘ Peruviens ’ to the manager with two other 
pieces I had in my desk. I am setting out for Holland with- 
out a sou. I shall eat dry bread on my journey till I reach 
Flushing. I have paid my passage, and have nothing more. 
But for my landlady’s compassion, and her trust in me, I 
should have had to walk to Flushing with a knapsack on my 
back. And so, in spite of your doubting me, as, but for you, 
I could not have sent my father-in-law and my wife to New 
York, I am entirely grateful.” No, Monsieur Alain, I will 
not forget that the hundred louis you lent me might at this 
time be yielding you an income of fifteen hundred francs.’ 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


65 


“ ‘ I would fain believe you, Mongenod/ said I, almost 
convinced by the tone in which he poured out this explanation. 

“‘At any rate, you no longer address me as monsieur/ 
said he eagerly, and looking at me with emotion. ‘ God 
knows I should quit France with less regret if I could leave 
one man behind me in whose eyes I was neither half a rogue, 
nor a spendthrift, nor a victim to illusions. A man who can 
love truly, Alain, is never wholly despicable/ 

“At these words I held out my hand; he took it and 
pressed it. 

“ ‘ Heaven protect you ! ’ said I. 

“ ‘ We are still friends? 7 he asked. 

“ ‘Yes/ I replied ; ‘ it shall never be said that my school- 
fellow, the friend of my youth, set out for America under the 
ban of my anger ! * 

“ Mongenod embraced me with tears in his eyes, and rushed 
off to the door. 

“ When I met Bordin a few days afterward, I told him the 
story of our interview, and he replied with a smile — 

“ ‘ I only hope it was not all part of the performance ! He 
did not ask you for anything ? ’ 

“ ‘ No/ said I. 

“ ‘ He came to me, too, and I was almost as weak as you ; 
but he asked me for something to get food on the way. How- 
ever, he who lives will see ! * 

“This remark of Bordin’s made me fear lest I had yielded 
stupidly to an impulse of feeling. 

“ ‘Still, he too, the public prosecutor, did the same/ said 
I to myself. 

“It is unnecessary, I think, to explain to you how I lost all 
my fortune excepting the other hundred louis, which I in- 
vested in Government securities when prices had risen so high 
that I had barely five hundred francs a year to live upon by 
the time I was four-and-thirty. By Bordin’s interest I ob- 
tained an appointment at eight hundred francs a year in a 
5 


66 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY, 


branch of the Mont de Piete (the State pawn-office), Rue des 
Petits Augustins. I lived in the humblest way ; I lodged on 
the fourth floor of a house in the Rue des Marais, in an apart- 
ment consisting of two rooms and a closet, for two hundred 
and fifty francs. I went out to dinner in a boarding-house 
where there was an open table, and for this I paid forty francs 
a month. In the evening I did some copying. Ugly as I am, 

and very poor, I had to give up all ideas of marriage ” 

As he heard this verdict pronounced on himself by poor 
Alain in a tone of angelic resignation, Godefroid gave a little 
start, which proved better than any speech could have done 
the similarity of their fate; and the good man, in reply to 
this eloquent gesture, seemed to pause for his hearer to speak. 
“And no one ever loved you ? ” asked Godefroid. 

“No one,” he replied, “excepting madame, who returns 
to each of us alike our love for her — a love I might almost 
call divine. You must have seen it ; we live in her life, as she 
lives in ours ; we have but one soul among us ; and though 
our enjoyments are not physical, they are none the less very 
intense, for we live only through the heart. How can we 
help it, my dear boy ? By the time women are capable of 
appreciating moral qualities, they have done with externals, 
and are growing old. I have suffered much, I can tell you ! ” 

“Ah ! that is the stage I am at ” said Godefroid. 

“Under the Empire,” the old man went on, bowing his 
head, “dividends were not very punctually paid; w r e had to 
be prepared for deferred payment. From 1802 to 1814 not a 
week passed that I did not ascribe my difficulties to Mongenod : 

* But for Mongenod,’ I used to think, ‘I might have been 
married. But for him I should not be obliged to live in 
privation.* But sometimes, too, I would say to myself, * Per- 
haps the poor man is pursued by ill-luck out there ! ’ 

“In 1806, one day when I found my life a heavy burden 
to bear, I wrote him a long letter that I dispatched via Hol- 
land. I had no answer ; and for three years I waited, found- 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


61 


ing hopes on that reply which were constantly deceived. At 
last I resigned myself to my fate. To my five hundred francs 
of dividends, and twelve hundred francs of salary from the 
Mont de Piete, for it was raised, I added five hundred for my 
work as bookkeeper to a perfumer, Monsieur Birotteau. Thus 
I not only made both ends meet, but I saved eight hundred 
francs a year. By the beginning of 1814, I was able to invest 
nine thousand francs of savings in the funds, buying at forty ; 
thus I had secured sixteen hundred francs a year for my old 
age. So then, with fifteen hundred francs a year from the 
Mont de Piete, six hundred as a bookkeeper, and sixteen 
hundred in dividends, I had an income of three thousand 
seven hundred francs. I took rooms in the Rue de Seine, 
and lived in rather more comfort. 

“ My position brought me into contact with many of the 
very poor. For twelve years I have known, better than any 
one, what the misery of the world is ; once or twice I have 
helped some poor creatures ; and I felt the keenest pleasure 
when, out of ten that I had assisted, one or two families were 
rescued from their difficulties. 

“It struck me that true beneficence did not consist in 
throwing money to the sufferers. Being charitable, in the 
common phrase, often appeared to me to be a sort of premium 
on crime. I set to work to study this question. I was by 
this time fifty years old, and my life was drawing to a close. 

“ ‘ What good am I in the world ? ’ I asked myself. 1 To 
whom can I leave my money ? When I shall have furnished 
my rooms handsomely, have secured a good cook, have made 
my life suitably comfortable, what am I to do with my time?’ 

“ For eleven years of revolutions and fifteen years of pov- 
erty had wasted the happiest part of my life,, had consumed it 
in labors that were fruitless, or devoted solely to the preserva- 
tion of my person ! At such an age no one can make an 
obscure and penurious youth the starting-point to reach a 
brilliant position ; but every one may make himself useful. I 


68 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


understood, in short, that a certain supervision and much 
good advice would increase tenfold the value of money given, 
for the poor always need guidance to enable them to profit 
by the work they do for others, it is not the intelligence of 
the speculator that is wanting to deceive them. 

44 A few happy results that I achieved made me extremely 
proud. I discerned both an aim and an occupation, to say 
nothing of the exquisite pleasure to be derived from playing 
the part of Providence, even on the smallest scale.” 

“And you now play it on a large scale?” said Godefroid 
eagerly. 

“Oh, you want to know too much!” said the old man. 
“Nay, nay. Would you believe it,” he went on after a 
pause, “ the smallness of the means at my command constantly 
brought my thoughts back to Mongenod ? 

“ 4 But for Mongenod I could have done so much more/ 
I used to reflect. 4 If a dishonest man had not robbed me of 
fifteen hundred francs a year,’ I often thought, 4 I could have 
helped this or that family.’ 

44 Thus excusing my inability by such an accusation, those 
to whom I gave nothing but words to comfort them joined 
me in cursing Mongenod. These maledictions were balm to 
my heart. 

44 One morning, in January, 1816, my housekeeper an- 
nounced — whom do you think ? — Mongenod. Monsieur Mon- 
genod. And who should walk in but the pretty wife, now 
six-and-thirty, accompanied by three children ; then came 
Mongenod, younger than when he left, for wealth and happi- 
ness shed a glory on those they favor. He had gone away 
lean, pale, yellow, and haggard ; he had come back fat and 
well-liking, as flourishing as a prebendary, and well dressed. 
He threw himself into my arms, and, finding himself coldly 
welcomed, his first words were — 

4 4 4 Could I come any sooner, my friend ? The seas have 
only been open since 1815, and it took me eighteen months to 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


69 


realize my property, close my accounts, and call in my assets. 
I have succeeded, my friend ! When I received your letter 
in 1806, I set out in a Dutch vessel to bring you home a little 
fortune ; but the union of Holland with the French Empire led 
to our being taken by the English, who transported me to the 
coast of Jamaica, whence by good-luck I escaped. 

“ ‘ On my return to New York I was a victim to bank- 
ruptcy ; for Charlotte, during my absence, had not known how 
to be on her guard against swindlers. So I was compelled to 
begin again to accumulate a fortune. 

“ ‘ However, here we are at last. From the way the children 
look at you, you may suppose that they have often heard of 
the benefactor of the family.’ 

“ ‘ Yes, indeed,’ said pretty Madame Mongenod, ‘we never 
passed a day without speaking of you. Your share has been 
allowed for in every transaction. We have longed for the 
happiness we enjoy at this moment of offering you your for- 
tune, though we have never for a moment imagined that this 
“rector’s tithe ” can pay our debt of gratitude.’ 

“And, as she spoke, Madame Mongenod offered me the 
beautiful casket you see there, which contained a hundred and 
fifty thousand-franc notes. 

“‘You have suffered much, my dear Alain, I know; but 
we could imagine all your sufferings, and we racked our brains 
to find means of sending you money, but without success,* 
Mongenod went on. ‘You tell me you could not marry; but 
here is our eldest daughter. She has been brought up in the 
idea that she should be your wife, and she has five hundred 
thousand francs ’ 

“ ‘ God forbid that I should wreck her happiness ! ’ cried I, 
as % I beheld a girl as lovely as her mother had been at her 
age ; and I drew her to me, and kissed her forehead. 

“ ‘ Do not be afraid, my pretty child,’ said I. ‘A man of 
fifty and a girl of seventeen — and so ugly an old fellow as I ! 
Never!.* 


70 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


“ ‘ Monsieur,’ said she, ‘my father’s benefactor can never 
seem ugly in my eyes.’ 

“This speech, made with spontaneous candor, showed me 
that all Mongenod had told me was true. I offered him my 
hand, and we fell into each other’s arms once more. 

“ ‘ My friend,’ said I, ‘ I have often abused you, cursed 
you ’ 

“ ‘You had every right, Alain,’ replied he, reddening. 

‘ You were in poverty through my fault ’ 

“ I took Mongenod’s papers out of a box and restored them 
to him, after canceling his note of hand. 

“ ‘ Now, you will all breakfast with me,’ said I to the family 
party. 

“ ‘ On condition of your dining with my wife as soon as we 
are settled,’ said Mongenod, ‘ for we arrived only yesterday. 
We are going to buy a house, and I am about to open a bank 
in Paris for North American business to leave to that young- 
ster,’ he said, pointing to his eldest son, a lad of about fifteen 
years. 

“ We spent the afternoon together, and in the evening we 
all went to the theatre, for Mongenod and his party were 
dying to see a play. Next day I invested in the Funds, and 
had then an income of about fifteen thousand francs in all. 
This released me from bookkeeping in the evening, and al- 
lowed me to give up my appointment, to the great satisfaction 
of all my subordinates. 

“My friend died in 1827, after founding the banking-house 
of Mongenod & Co., which made immense profits on the first 
loans issued at the time of the Restoration. His daughter, 
to whom he subsequently gave about a million of francs, 
married the Vicomte de Fontaine. The son whom you know 
is not yet married ; he lives with his mother and his younger 
brother. We find them ready with all the money we may 
need. 

“ Frederic — for his father, in America, had named him after 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


71 


me — Frederic Mongenod, at seven-and-thirty, is one of the 
most skillful and respected bankers in Paris. 

“ Not very long since Madame Mongenod confessed to me 
that she had sold her hair for two crowns of six livres to be 
able to buy some bread. She gives twenty-four loads of wood 
every year, which I distribute among the poor, in return for 
the half-load I once sent her.” 

“ Then this accounts for your connection with the house 
of Mongenod,” said Godefroid. “And your fortune ” 

The old man still looked at Godefroid with the same expres- 
sion of mild irony. 

“ Pray go on,” said Godefroid, seeing by Monsieur Alain’s 
manner that he had more to say. 

“ This conclusion, my dear Godefroid, made the deepest 
impression on me. Though the man who had suffered so 
much, though my friend had forgiven me my injustice, I 
could not forgive myself.” 

“ Oh ! ” said Godefroid. 

“I determined to devote all my surplus income, about ten 
thousand francs a year, to acts of rational beneficence,” Mon- 
sieur Alain calmly went on. “ At about that time I met an 
examining judge of the department of the Seine named Popi- 
not, whose death we mourned three years ago, and who for 
fifteen years practiced the most enlightened charity in the 
Saint-Marcel quarter. He, in concert with the venerable vicar 
of Notre-Dame and with madame, planned the work in which 
we are all engaged, and which, since 1823, has secretly 
effected some good results. 

“This work has found a soul in Madame de la Chanterie; 
she is really the very spirit of the undertaking. The vicar 
has succeeded in making us more religious than we were at 
first, demonstrating the necessity for being virtuous ourselves 
if we desire to inspire virtue — for preaching, in fact, by 
example. And the further we progress in that path, the 
happier we are among ourselves. Thus it was my repentance 


72 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


for having misprized the heart of my boyhood’s friend which 
led me to the idea of devoting to the poor, through myself, 
the fortune he brought home to me, which I accepted without 
demurring to the vast sum repaid to me for so small a loan ; 
the application of it made it right.” 

This narrative, devoid of all emphasis, and told with 
touching simplicity of tone, gesture, and expression, would 
. have been enough to make Godefroid resolve on joining in 
I this noble and saintly work, if he had not already intended 
it. 

“You know little of the world,” said Godefroid, “if you 
had such scruples over a thing which would never have 
weighed on any other conscience.” 

“I know only the wretched,” replied the good man. “I 
have no wish to know a world where men misjudge each other 
with so little compunction. Now, it is nearly midnight, and 
I have to meditate on my chapter of the Imitation. Good- 
night.” 

Godefroid took the kind old man’s hand and pressed it with 
an impulse of genuine admiration. 

“Can y.ou tell me Madame de la Chanterie’s history?” 
asked Godefroid. 

“ It would be impossible without her permission, for it is 
connected with one of the most terrible incidents of imperial 
politics. I first knew madame through my friend Bordin ; 
he knew all the secrets of that beautiful life ; and it was he 
who led me, so to speak, to this house.” 

“At any rate, then,” said Godefroid, “I thank you for 
having told me your life ; it contains a lesson for me.” 

“ Do you discern its moral ? ” 

“Nay, tell it me,” said Godefroid; “for I might see it 
differently to you ” 

“ Well, then,” said the good man, “ pleasure is but an ac- 
cident in the life of the Christian ; it is not his aim and end — 
and we learn this too late.” 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


73 


* ‘ What then happens when we are converted?” asked 
Godefroid. 

“Look there! ” said Alain, and he pointed to an inscrip- 
tion in letters of gold on a black ground, which the new-comer 
had not seen before, as this was the first time he had ever 
been into his companion’s rooms. He turned round and 
read the words : Transire Benefaciendo. 

“That, my son, is the meaning we then find in life. That 
is our motto. If you become one of us, that constitutes your 
brevet. We read that text and take it as our counsel at every 
hour of the day, when we rise, when we go to bed, while we 
dress. Oh ! if you could but know what infinite happiness is 
to be found in carrying out that device ! ” 

“In what way?” said Godefroid, hoping for some ex- 
planations. 

“ In the first place, we are as rich as Baron de Nucingen. 
But the Imitation prohibits our calling anything our own ; we 
are but stewards ; and if we feel a single impulse of pride, we 
are not worthy to be stewards. That would not be tran- 
sire benefaciendo ; it would be enjoyment in thought. If 
you say to yourself, with a certain dilation of the nostrils, 
‘ I am playing the part of Providence ’ — as you might have 
thought this morning, if you had been in my place, giving 
new life to a whole family, you are a Sardanapalus at once 
—and wicked ! Not one of our members ever thinks of 
himself when doing good. You must cast off all vanity, 
all pride, all self-consciousness ; and it is difficult, I can tell 
you.” 

Godefroid bid Monsieur Alain good-night, and went to his 
own rooms, much moved by this story ; but his curiosity was 
excited rather than satisfied, for the chief figure in the picture 
of this domestic scene was Madame de la Chanterie. This 
woman’s history was to him so supremely interesting that he 
made the knowledge of it the first aim of his stay in the 
house. He understood that the purpose for which these 


74 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


five persons were associated was some great charitable en- 
deavor ; but he thought much less of that than of its heroine. 

The neophyte spent some days in studying these choice 
spirits, amid whom he found himself, with greater attention 
than he had hitherto devoted to them ; and he became the 
subject of a moral phenomenon which modern philanthropists 
have overlooked, from ignorance perhaps. The sphere in 
which he lived had a direct influence on Godefroid. The law 
which governs physical nature in respect to the influence of 
atmospheric conditions on the lives of the beings subject to 
them, also governs moral nature ; whence it is to be inferred 
that the collecting in masses of the criminal class is one of 
the greatest social crimes, while absolute isolation is an experi- 
ment of which the success is very doubtful. Condemned 
felons ought, therefore, to be placed in religious institutions 
and surrounded with prodigies of goodness instead of being 
left among marvels of evil. The church may be looked to for 
perfect devotion to this cause ; for if she is ready to send mis- 
sionaries to barbarous or savage nations, how gladly would she 
charge her religious orders with the mission of rescuing 
and instructing the savages of civilized life ! Every criminal 
is an atheist — often without knowing it. 

Godefroid found his five companions endowed with the 
qualities they demanded of him; they were all free from pride 
or vanity, all truly humble and pious, devoid of the pretenti- 
ousness which constitutes “ devoutness ” in the invidious sense 
of the word. These virtues were contagious ; he was filled 
with the desire to imitate these obscure heroes, and he ended 
by studying with ardor the book he had at first scorned. 
Within a fortnight he had reduced life to its simplest expres- 
sion, to what it really is when regarded from the lofty point 
of view to which the religious spirit leads us. Finally, his 
curiosity, at first purely worldly and roused by many vulgar 
motives, became rarefied. He did not cease to be curious ; it 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 75 

would have been difficult to lose all interest in the life of 
Madame de la Chanterie ; but, without intending it, he 
showed a reserve which was fully appreciated by these men, 
in whom the Holy Spirit had developed wonderful depths of 
mind, as happens, indeed, with all who devote themselves to 
a religious life. The concentration of the moral powers, by 
whatever means or system, increases their scope tenfold. 

“ Our young friend is not yet a convert,” said the good 
Abbe de Veze; “but he wishes to be.” 

An unforeseen circumstance led to the revelation of Madame 
de la Chanterie’s history, so that his intense interest in it was 
soon satisfied. 

Paris was just then engrossed by the investigation of the case 
of the Saint-Jacques barrier, one of those hideous trials which 
mark the history of our assizes. The trial derived its interest 
from the criminals themselves, whose daring and general 
superiority to ordinary culprits, with their cynical contempt 
for justice, really appalled the public. It was a noteworthy 
fact that no newspaper ever entered the Hotel de la Chanterie, 
and Godefroid only heard of the rejection of the appeal to 
the Supreme Court from his master in bookkeeping; the 
trial had taken place long before he came to Madame de la 
Chanterie. 

“ Do you ever meet with such men as these atrocious scoun- 
drels?” he asked his new friends. “Or, when you do, how 
do you deal with them?” 

“In the first place,” said Monsieur Nicolas, “there is no 
such thing as an atrocious scoundrel ; there are mad creatures 
fit only for the asylum at Charenton ; but with the exception 
of those rare pathological exceptions, what we find are simply 
men without religion, or who argue falsely, and the task of the 
charitable is to set souls upright and bring the erring into the 
right way.” 

“And to the apostle all things are possible,” said the Abb£ 
de Veze ; “ he has God on his side.” 

Q 


76 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


“If you were sent to these two condemned men,” said 
Godefroid, “ you could do nothing with them.” 

“There would not be time,” observed Monsieur Alain very 
seriously. 

“As a rule,” said Monsieur Nicolas, “the souls handed 
over to be dealt with by the church are in utter impenitence, 
and the time is too short for miracles to be wrought. The 
men of whom you are speaking, if they had fallen into our 
hands, would have been men of mark ; their energy is im- 
mense ; but when once they have committed murder, it is 
impossible to do anything for them ; human justice has taken 
possession of them ” 

“Then you are averse to capital punishment?” said Gode- 
froid. 

Monsieur Nicolas hastily rose and left the room. 

“ Never speak of capital punishment in the presence of 
Monsieur Nicolas. He once recognized in a criminal, whose 
execution it was his duty to superintend, a natural child of his 
own ” 

“And who was innocent ! ” added Monsieur Joseph. 

At this moment Madame de la Chanterie, who had not been 
in the room, came in. 

“Still, you must allow,” Godefroid went on, addressing 
Monsieur Joseph, “that society cannot exist without capital 
punishment, and that these men, whose heads ” 

Godefroid felt his mouth suddenly closed by a strong hand, 
and the Abbe de Veze led away Madame de la Chanterie, pale 
and half-dead. 

“ What have you done ? ” cried Monsieur Joseph. “ Take 
him away, Alain,” he said, removing the hand with which he 
had gagged Godefroid ; and he followed the Abbe de Vdze 
into madame’s room. 

“Come with me,” said Alain to Godefroid. “You have 
compelled us to tell you the secrets of Madame de la Chan- 
terie’s life.” 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


77 


In a few minutes the two friends were together in Monsieur 
Alain’s room, as they had been when the oid man had told 
Godefroid his own history. 

“ Well ? ” said Godefroid, whose face sufficiently showed his 
despair at having been the cause of what might be called a 
catastrophe in this pious household. 

“ I am waiting till Manon shall have come to say how she 
is going on,” replied the good man as he heard the woman’s 
step on the stairs. 

“ Monsieur, madame is better. Monsieur l’Abbe managed 
to deceive her as to what had been said,” and Manon shot a 
wrathful glance at Godefroid. 

“ Good heavens ! ” exclaimed the unhappy young man, his 
eyes filling with tears. 

“ Come, sit down,” said Monsieur Alain, seating himself. 
Then he paused to collect his thoughts. 

“ I do not know,” said the kind old man, “ that I have the 
talent necessary to give a worthy narrative of a life so cruelly 
tried. You must forgive me if you find the words of so poor 
a speaker inadequate to the magnitude of the events and catas- 
trophes. You must remember that it is a very long time since 
I was at school, and that I date from a time when thoughts 
were held of more importance than effect — from a prosaic age, 
when we knew not how to speak of things except by their 
names.” 

Godefroid bowed with an expression of assent, in which his 
worthy old friend could discern his sincere admiration, and 
which plainly said, “ I am listening.” 

“As you have just perceived, my young friend, it would be 
impossible for you to remain one of us without learning some 
of the particulars of that saintly woman’s life. There are cer- 
tain ideas, allusions, words, which are absolutely prohibited 
in this house, since they inevitably reopen wounds, of which 
the anguish might kill madame if it were once or twice re- 
vived — 


78 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY, 


“Good heavens !” exclaimed Godefroid, “what have I 
done? ” 

“But for Monsieur Joseph, who happily interrupted you 
just as you were about to speak of the awful instrument of 
death, you would have annihilated the poor lady. It is time 
that you should be told all ; for you will be one of us, of that 
we are all convinced. 

“ Madame de la Chanterie,” he went on after a short pause, 
“is descended from one of the first families of Lower Nor- 
mandy. Her maiden name was Mademoiselle Barbe-Philiberte 
de Champignelles — of a younger branch of that house; and 
she was intended to take the veil unless a marriage could be 
arranged for her with the usual renunciations of property that 
were commonly required in poor families of high rank. A 
certain Sieur de la Chanterie, whose family had sunk into utter 
obscurity, though dating from the time of Philippe-Auguste’s 
crusade, was anxious to recover the rank to which so ancient 
a name gave him a claim in the province of Normandy. But 
he had fallen quite from his high estate, for he had made 
money — some three hundred thousand francs — by supplying 
the commissariat for the army at the time of the war with 
Hanover. His son, trusting too much to this wealth, which 
provincial rumor magnified, was living in Paris in a way cal- 
culated to cause the father of a family very great uneasiness 
and alarm. 

“ Mademoiselle de Champignelles’ great merits became 
famous throughout the district of le Bessin ; and the old man, 
whose little estate of la Chanterie lay between Caen and 
Saint-Lo, heard some expressions of regret that so accom- 
plished a young lady, and one so capable of making a husband 
happy, should end her days in a convent. On his uttering a 
wish to seek her out, some hope was given him that he might 
obtain the hand of Mademoiselle Philiberte for his son if he 
were content to renounce any marriage portion. He went to 
Baveux ? contrived to have two or three meetings with the 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


5 9 

Champignelles family, and was fascinated by the young lady’s 
noble qualities. 

“At the age of sixteen, Mademoiselle de Champignelles 
gave promise of what she would become. She evinced well- 
founded piety, sound good-sense, inflexible rectitude — one of 
those natures which will never veer in its affections even if 
they are the outcome of duty. The old nobleman, enriched 
by his somewhat illicit gains, discerned in this charming girl 
a wife who might keep his son in order by the authority of 
virtue and the ascendency of a character that was firm but not 
rigid ; for, as you have seen, no one can be gentler than 
Madame de la Chanterie. Then, no one could be more con- 
fiding; even in the decline of life she has the candor of inno- 
cence ; in her youth she would not believe in evil; such 
distrust as you may have seen in her she owes to her misfor- 
tunes. The old man pledged himself to the Champignelles 
to give them a discharge in full for the portion legitimately 
due to Mademoiselle Philiberte on the signing of the marriage- 
contract; in return, the Champignelles, who were connected 
with the greatest families, promised to have the feof of la 
Chanterie created a barony, and they kept their word. The 
bridegroom’s aunt, Madame de Boisfrelon, the wife of the 
councilor to the Parlement who died in your rooms, promised 
to leave her fortune to her nephew. 

“ When all these arrangements were completed between the 
two families, the father sent for his son. This young man, at 
the time of his marriage, was five-and-twenty, and already a 
master of appeals ; he had indulged in numerous follies with 
the young gentlemen of the time, living in their style; and 
the old army contractor had several times paid his debts to a 
considerable amount. The poor father, foreseeing further 
dissipation on his son’s part, was only too glad to settle a part 
of his fortune on his daughter-in-law ; but he was so cautious 
as to entail the estate of la Chanterie on the heirs male of the 
marriage 


go 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


“A precaution,” added Monsieur Alain in a parenthesis, 

“ which the Revolution made useless.” 

‘‘As handsome as an angel, and wonderfully skilled in all 
athletic exercises, the young master of appeals had immense 
powers of charming,” he went on. “So Mademoiselle de 
Champignelles, as you may easily imagine, fell very much in 
love with her husband. The old man, made very happy by 
this promising beginning, and hoping that his son was a re- 
formed character, sent the young couple to Paris. This was 
early in 1788. For nearly a year they were perfectly happy. 
Madame de la Chanterie was the object of all the little cares, the 
most delicate attentions that a devoted lover can lavish on the 
one and only woman he loves. Brief as it was, the honey- 
moon beamed brightly on the heart of the noble and unfortu- 
nate lady. 

“As you know, in those days mothers all nursed their in- 
fants themselves. Madame de la Chanterie had a daughter. 
This time, when a wife ought to be the object of double 
devotion on her husband’s part, was, on the contrary, the 
beginning of dreadful woes. The master of appeals was 
obliged to sell everything he could spare to pay old debts 
which he had not confessed, and more recent gambling debts. 
Then, suddenly the National Assembly dissolved the Supreme 
Council and the Parlement, and abolished all the great law 
appointments that had been so dearly purchased. Thus the 
young couple, with the addition of their child, had no 
income to rely on but the revenues from the entailed estate, 
and from the portion settled on Madame de la Chanterie. , 
Twenty months after her marriage this charming woman, at 
the age of seventeen and a half, found herself reduced to 
maintaining herself and the child at her breast by the work of 
her hands, in an obscure street where she hid herself. She 
then found herself absolutely deserted by her husband, who 
fell step by step into the society of the very lowest kind. 
Never did she blame her husband, never did she put him in 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


81 


the least in the wrong. She has told us that all through the 
worst time she prayed to God for her dear Henri. 

“ The rascal’s name was Henri,” remarked Monsieur Alain. 
“ It is a name that must never be spoken here, any more than 
that of Henriette. To proceed : 

“ Madame de la Chanterie, who never quitted her little 
room in the Rue de la Corderie-du-Temple unless to buy food 
or fetch her work, kept her head above water, thanks partly 
to an allowance of a hundred francs a month from her father- 
in-law, who was touched by so much virtue. However, the 
poor young wife, foreseeing that this support might fail her, 
had taken up the laborious work of a staymaker, and worked 
for a famous dressmaker. In fact, ere long the old contractor 
died, and his estate was consumed by his son under favor of 
the overthrow of the Monarchy. 

“The erewhile master of appeals, now one of the most 
savage of all the presidents of the revolutionary tribunal, had 
become a terror in Normandy, and could indulge all his pas- 
sions. Then, imprisoned in his turn on the fall of Robes- 
pierre, the hatred of the department condemned him to in- 
evitable death. Madame de la Chanterie received a farewell 
letter announcing her husband’s fate. She immediately placed 
her little girl in the care of a neighbor, and went off to the 
town where the wretch was in confinement, taking with her a 
few louis, which constituted her whole fortune. This money 
enabled her to get into the prison. She succeeded in helping 
her husband to escape, dressing him in clothes of her own, 
under circumstances very similar to those which not long after 
favored Madame de la Valette. She was condemned to death, 
but the authorities were ashamed to carry out this act of re- 
venge, and she was secretly released with the connivance of 
the Court over which her husband had formerly presided. 
She got back to Paris on foot without any money, sleeping 
at farmhouses, and often fed by charitv.” 

“ Good heavens ! ” exclaimed Godefroid. 

6 


82 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


“Wait,’* said the old man, “ that was nothing. In the 
course of eight years the poor woman saw her husband three 
times. The first time the gentleman spent twenty-four hours 
in his wife’s humble lodgings, and went away with all her 
money, after heaping on her every mark of affection, and 
leading her to believe in his complete reformation. ‘ For I 
could not resist,’ said she, ‘ a man for whom I prayed every 
day, and who filled my thoughts exclusively.’ The second 
time Monsieur de la Chanterie came in a dying state, and 
from some horrible disease ! She nursed him, and saved his 
life ; then she tried to reclaim him to decent feeling and a 
seemly life. After promising everything this angel begged of 
him, the revolutionary relapsed into hideous debaucheries, 
and in fact only escaped prosecution by the authorities by 
taking refuge in his wife’s rooms, where he died unmolested. 

“ Still, all this was nothing ! ” said Alain, seeing dismay 
in Godefroid’s face. 

“No one in the world he had mixed with had known that 
the man was married. Two years after the miserable crea- 
ture’s death, she heard that there was a second Madame de la 
Chanterie, widowed and ruined like herself. The bigamous 
villain had found two such angels incapable of betraying him. 
Toward 1803,” the old man went on after a pause, “ Mon- 
sieur de Boisfrelon, Madame de la Chanterie’s uncle, having 
his name removed from the list of proscribed persons, came 
back to Paris and paid over to her two hundred thousand 
francs that the old commissariat-contractor had placed in his 
keeping, with instructions to hold it in trust for his niece. 
He persuaded the widow to return to Normandy, where she 
completed her daughter’s education, and, by the advice of 
the old lawyer, purchased back one of the family estates under 
very favorable conditions.” 

“ Ah ! ” sighed Godefroid. 

“ Oh ! all this was nothing ! ” said Monsieur Alain. “We 
have not yet come to the hurricane. To proceed. In 1807, 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


83 


after four years of peace, Madame de la Chanterie saw her 
only daughter married to a gentleman whose piety, whose 
antecedents, and fortune seemed a guarantee from every point 
of view ; a man who was reported to be the ‘ pet lamb ’ of 
the best society in the country-town where madame and her 
daughter spent every winter. Remark : this society consisted 
of seven or eight families belonging to the highest French 
nobility — the d’Esgrignons, the Troisvilles, the Casterans, 
the Nouatres, and the like. 

“At the end of eighteen months this man deserted his wife 
and vanished in Paris, having changed his name. Madame 
de la Chanterie could never discover the cause of this separa- 
tion till the lightning flash showed it in the midst of the 
storm. Her daughter, whom she had brought up with the 
greatest care and the purest religious feelings, preserved abso- 
lute silence on the subject. 

“ This lack of confidence was a great shock to Madame de 
la Chanterie. Many times already she had detected in her 
daughter certain indications of the father’s adventurous spirit, 
strengthened by an almost manly determination of character. 
The husband had departed without let or hindrance, 
leaving his affairs in the utmost disorder. To this day 
Madame de la Chanterie is amazed at this catastrophe, which 
no human power could remedy. All the persons she privately 
consulted had assured her before the marriage that the young 
man’s fortune was clear and unembarrassed, in land unen- 
cumbered by mortgages, when, at that very time, the estate 
had, for ten years, been loaded with debt far beyond its 
value. So everything was sold, and the poor young wife, 
reduced to her own little income, came back to live with her k 
mother. 

“ Madame de la Chanterie subsequently learned that this 
man had been kept going by the most respectable persons in 
the district for their own benefit, for the wretched man owed 
them all more or less considerable sums of money. Indeed, 


84 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


ever since her arrival in the province, Madame de la Chanterie 
had been regarded as a prey. 

“ However, there were other reasons for this climax of 
disaster, which you will understand from a confidential com- 
munication addressed to the Emperor. 

“ This man had long since succeeded in winning the good 
graces of the leading Royalists of the Department by his 
devotion to the cause during the stormiest days of the Revolu- 
tion. As one of Louis XVIII. ’s most active emissaries, he 
had, since 1793, ^ een mixed up in every conspiracy, always 
withdrawing at the right moment, and with so much dexterity 
as to give rise at last to suspicions of his honor. The King 
dismissed him from service, and he was excluded from all 
further scheming, so he retired to his estate, already deeply 
involved. All these antecedents, at that time scarcely known 
— for those who were initiated into the secrets of the Cabinet 
did not say much about so dangerous a colleague — made him 
an object almost of worship in a town devoted to the Bour- 
bons, where the crudest devices of the Chouans were regarded 
as honest warfare. The Esgrignons, the Casterans,i the 
Chevalier de Valois, in short, the aristocracy and the church, 
received the Royalist with open arms, and took him to their 
bosom. This favor was supported by his creditors’ earnest 
desire to be paid. 

“ This wretch, a match for the deceased la Chanterie, was 
able to keep up this part for three years ; he affected the 
greatest piety, and subjugated his vices. During the first few 
months of his married life he had some little influence over 
his wife ; he did his utmost to corrupt her by his doctrines, 
if atheism may be called a doctrine, and by the flippant tone 
in which he spoke of the most sacred things. 

“This backstairs diplomatist had, on his return to the 
country, formed an intimacy with a young man, over head 
and ears in debt like himself, but attractive, in so far that he 
had as much courage and honesty as the other had shown 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


85 


hypocrisy and cowardice. This guest at his house — whose 
charm and character could not fail to impress a young woman, 
to say nothing of his adventurous career — was a tool in the 
husband’s hands which he used to support his infamous prin- 
ciples. The daughter never confessed to her mother the gulf 
into which circumstances had thrown her — for human prudence 
is no word for the caution exercised by Madame de la Chan- 
terie when seeking a husband for her only child. And this 
last blow, in a life so devoted, so guileless, so religious as 
hers, tested as she had been by every kind of misfortune, filled 
Madame de la Chanterie with a distrust of herself which isolated 
her from her daughter ; all the more so because her daughter, 
in compensation for her ill-fortune, insisted on perfect liberty, 
overruled her mother, and was sometimes very rough with her. 

“Thus wounded in every feeling, cheated alike in her 
devotion and her love for her husband — to whom she had 
sacrificed her happiness, her fortune, and her life, without a 
murmur ; cheated in the exclusively religious training she had 
given her daughter ; cheated by the world, even in the matter 
of that daughter’s marriage, and meeting with no justice from 
the heart in which she had implanted none but right feelings, 
she turned more resolutely to God, clinging to Him whose 
hand lay so heavy on her. She was almost a nun ; she went 
to mass every morning, carried out monastic discipline, and 
saved in everything to be able to help the poor. 

“ Has any woman ever known a more saintly or more 
severely tried life than this noble creature, so mild to the 
unfortunate, so brave in danger, and always so perfect a 
Christian?” said the worthy man, appealing to Godefroid. 
“You know madame, you know whether she is deficient in 
sense, judgment, and reflection. She has all these qualities 
in the highest degree. Well, and still all these misfortunes, 
which surely were enough to qualify any life as surpassing all 
others in adversity, were a trifle compared with what God had 
yet in store for this woman. We will speak only of Madame 


86 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


de la Chanterie’s daughter,” said Monsieur Alain, going on 
with his narrative. 

“At the age of eighteen, when she married, Mademoiselle 
de la Chanterie had an extremely delicate complexion, rather 
dark, with a brilliant color, a slender form, and charming 
features. An elegantly formed brow was crowned by the most 
beautiful black hair, that matched well with bright and lively 
hazel eyes. A peculiar prettiness and a childlike countenance 
belied her real nature and masculine decisiveness. She had 
small hands and feet; in all her person there was something 
tiny and frail, which excluded any idea of strength and will- 
fulness. Never having lived away from her mother, her mind 
was absolutely innocent, and her piety remarkable. 

“This young lady, like Madame de la Chanterie, was 
fanatically devoted to the Bourbons, and hated the Revolu- 
tion ; she regarded Napoleon’s empire as a plague inflicted on 
France by Providence, as a punishment for the crimes of 1793. 
Such a conformity of opinion between the lady and her son- 
in-law was, as it always must be in such cases, a conclusive 
reason in favor of the marriage, in which all the aristocracy of 
the province took the greatest interest. 

“This wretched man’s friend had at the time of the rebel- 
lion in 1799 been the leader of a troop of Chouans. It would 
seem that the baron — for Madame de la Chanterie’s son-in- 
law was a baron — had no object in throwing his wife and his 
friend together but that of extracting money from them. 
Though deeply in debt, and without any means of living, the 
young adventurer lived in very good style, and was able, no 
doubt, to help the promoter of Royalist conspiracies. 

“Here you will need a few words of explanation as to an 
association which made a great noise in its day,” said Mon- 
sieur Alain, interrupting his narrative. “ I mean that of the 
raiders known as the Chauffeurs. These brigands pervaded 
all the western provinces more or less ; but their object was 
not so much pillage as a revival of the Royalist opposition, 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


8 ? 


Advantage was taken of the very general resistance of the 
people to the law of conscription, which, as you know, was 
enforced with many abuses. Between Mortagne and Rennes, 
and even beyond, as far as to the Loire, nocturnal raids were 
frequent, commonly to the injury of those who held national 
lands. These bands of destroyers were the terror of the 
country. I am not exaggerating when I tell you that in some 
Departments the arm of Justice was practically paralyzed. 
Those last thunders of civil war did not echo so far as you 
might suppose, accustomed as we now are to the startling 
publicity given by the press to the most trivial acts of political 
and private life. The censor allowed nothing to appear in 
print that bore on politics, unless it were accomplished fact, 
and even that was distorted. If you will take the trouble to 
look through old files of the ‘ Moniteur ’ and other news- 
papers, even those issued in the western provinces, you will 
find not a word concerning the four or five great trials which 
brought sixty or eighty of these rebels to the scaffold. 
1 Brigands,’ this was the name given under the Revolution to 
the Vendeens, the Chouans, and all who took up arms for the 
house of Bourbon ; and it was still given in legal phraseology 
under the Empire to the Royalists who were victims to 
sporadic conspiracies. For to some vehement souls the Em- 
peror and his government were * the Enemy,’ and everything 
seemed good that was adverse to him. I am explaining the 
position, not justifying the opinions, and I will now go on 
with my story. 

“So now,” he said, after a pause, such as will occur in a 
long story, “you must understand that these Royalists were 
ruined by the war of 1793, though consumed by frantic pas- 
sions; and if you can conceive of some exceptional natures 
consumed also by such necessities as those of Madame de la 
Chanterie’s son-in-law and his friend the Chouan leader, you 
will see how it was that they determined to commit, for their 
own private advantage, acts of robbery which their political 


88 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


opinions would justify, against the Imperial Government for 
the advantage of the Cause. 

“The young leader set to work to fan the ashes of the 
Chouan faction, to be ready to act at an opportune moment. 
There was, soon after, a terrible crisis in the Emperor’s affairs 
when he was shut up in the island of Lobau, and it seemed 
that he must inevitably succumb to a simultaneous attack by 
England and by Austria. The victory of Wagram made the 
internal rebellion all but abortive. This attempt to revive 
the fires of civil war in Brittany, la Vendee, and part of 
Normandy was unfortunately coincident with the baron’s 
money difficulties; he had flattered himself that he could 
contrive a separate expedition, of which the profits could be 
applied solely to redeem his property. But his wife and 
friend, with noble feeling, refusecf to divert to private uses 
any sums that might be snatched at the sword’s point from 
the State coffers ; these were to be distributed to the rebel 
conscripts and Chouans, and to purchase weapons and ammu- 
nition to arm a general rising. 

“At last, when after heated discussions the young Chouan, 
supported by the baroness, positively refused to retain a hun- 
dred thousand francs in silver crowns which was to be seized 
from one of the Government receivers’ offices in the west to 
provide for the Royalist forces, the husband disappeared, to 
escape the execution on his person of several writs that were 
out against him. The creditors tried to extract payment from 
his wife, but the wretched man had dried up the spring of 
affection which prompts a woman to sacrifice herself for her 
husband. 

“All this was kept from poor Madame de la Chanterie, but 
it was a trifle in comparison with the plot that lay behind this 
merely preliminary explanation. 

“ It is too late this evening,” said the good man, looking 
at the clock, “ and there is too much still to tell, to allow of 
my going on with the rest of the story. My old friend Bordin, 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


89 


who was made famous as a Royalist by his share in the great 
Simeuse trial, and who pleaded in the case of the Chauffeurs* 
of Mortagne, gave me when I came here to live two docu- 
ments which, as he died not long after, I still have in my pos- 
session. You will there find the facts set forth much more 
concisely than I could give them. The details are so compli- 
cated that I should lose myself in trying to state them, and it 
would take me more than two hours, while in these papers you 
will find them summarized. To-morrow morning I will tell 
you what remains to be told concerning Madame de la Chan- 
terie, for when you have read these documents you will be 
sufficiently informed for me to conclude my tale in a few 
words.” 

He placed some papers, yellow with years, in Godefroid’s 
hands; after bidding his neighbor good-night, the young man 
retired to his room, and before he went to sleep read the two 
documents here reproduced : 

“ Bill of Indictment. 

“ Court of Criminal and Special Justice for the Department 
of the Orne. 

“ The Public Prosecutor to the Imperial Court of Justice at 
Caen, appointed to carry out his functions to the Special 
Criminal Court sitting by the Imperial decree of September, 
1809, in the town of Alengon, sets forth to the Court the 
following facts, as proved by the preliminary proceedings, to 
wit : 

“That a conspiracy of brigands, hatched for a long time 
with extraordinary secrecy, and connected with a scheme for 
a general rising in the western departments, has vented itself 
in several attempts on the lives and property of citizens, and 

* Royalists who robbed the mail-coaches conveying government funds, 
also levying tribute on persons who had bought the confiscated property 
of itnigris. 


90 


THE SEA MV SIDE OF HISTORY. 


more especially in the attack with robbery, under arms, on a 
vehicle conveying, on the — of May, 18 — , the Government 
moneys collected at Caen. This attack, recalling in its de- 
tails the memories of the civil war now so happily at an end, 
showed deep-laid designs of a degree of villainy which cannot 
be excused by the vehemence of passion. 

“ From its inception to the end, the plot is extremely com- 
plicated and the details numerous. The preliminary examina- 
tions lasted for more than a year, but the evidence forthcoming 
at every stage of the crime throws full light on the preparations 
made, on its execution, and results. 

“ The first idea of the plot was conceived of by one Charles- 
Amedee-Louis-Joseph Rifoel, calling himself the Chevalier du 
Vissard, born at le Vissard, a hamlet of Saint-Mexme by Ernee, 
and formerly a leader of the rebels. 

“ This man, who was pardoned by His Majesty the Emperor 
at the time of the general peace and amnesty, and whose 
ingratitude to his sovereign has shown itself in fresh crimes, 
has already suffered the extreme penalty of the law as the 
punishment for his misdeeds ; but it is necessary here to refer 
to some of his actions, as he had great influence over some of 
the accused now awaiting the verdict of justice, and he is con- 
cerned in every circumstance of the case. 

“ This dangerous agitator, who bore an alias, as is common 
with these rebels, and was known as ‘Pierrot,’ used to wander 
about the western provinces enlisting partisans for a fresh 
rebellion ; but his safest lurking-place was the Castle of Saint- 
Savin, the home of a woman named Lechantre and her 
daughter named Bryond, a house in the hamlet of Saint- 
Savin and in the district of Mortagne. This spot is famous 
in the most horrible annals of the rebellion of 1799. It was 
there that a courier was murdered, and his chaise plundered 
by a band of brigands under the command of a woman, helped 
by the notorious Marche-a-Terre. Hence brigandage may be 
said to be endemic in this neighborhood. 


THE SEA Ml SIDE OE HISTORY. 


01 


“An intimacy for which we seek no name had existed fot 
more than a year between the woman Bryond and the above* 
named Rifoel. 

“It was close to this spot that, in the month of April, 
1808, an interview took place between Rifoel and one Bois- 
laurier, a superior leader, known in the more serious risings in 
the west by the name of Auguste, and he it was who was the 
moving spirit of the rising now under the consideration of 
the Court. 

“This obscure point, namely, the connection of these two 
leaders, is plainly proved by the evidence of numerous wit- 
nesses, and also stands as a demonstrated fact by the sentence 
of death carried out on Rifoel. From the time of that meeting, 
Boislaurier and Rifoel agreed to act in concert. 

“They communicated to each other, and at first to no one 
else, their atrocious purpose, founded on His Royal and Im- 
perial Majesty’s absence, in command, at the time, of his 
forces in Spain ; and then, or soon thereafter, they must have 
plotted to capture the State moneys in transit, as the base for 
further operations. 

“ Some time later, one Dubut of Caen dispatched a mes- 
senger to the Castle of Saint-Savin, namely, one .Hiley, known 
as le Laboureur, long known as a robber of the diligences; 
he was charged with information as to trustworthy accomplices. 
And it was thus, by Hiley’s intervention, that the plot secured 
the cooperation from the first of one Herbomez, called 
General-Hardi, a pardoned rebel of the same stamp as Rifoel, 
and, like him, a traitor to the amnesty. 

“ Herbomez and Hiley recruited in the neighboring villages 
seven banditti, whose names must at once be set forth as 
follows : 

“ 1. Jean Cibot, called Pille-Miche, one of the boldest 
brigands of a troop got together by Montauran in the year 
VII., and one of the actors in the robbery and murder of the 
Mortagne courier. 


92 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


“ 2. Frangois Lisieux, known as Grand-Fils, a rebel-con- 
script of the department of the Mayenne. 

“3. Charles Grenier, or Fleur-de-Genet, a deserter from the 
69th half-brigade. 

“ 4. Gabriel Bruce, known as Gros-Jean, one of the fiercest 
Chouans of Fontaine’s division. 

“ 5. Jacques Horeau, called Stuart, ex-lieutenant of that 
brigade, one of Tint6niac*s adherents, and well known by 
the share he took in the Quiberon expedition. 

“6. Marie-Anne Cabot, called Lajeunesse, formerly hunts- 
man to the Sieur Carol of Alengon. 

“ 7. Louis Minard, a rebel conscript. 

“ These, when enrolled, were quartered in three different 
hamlets in the houses of Binet, Melin, and Laraviniere, inn 
or tavernkeepers, all devoted to Rifoel. 

“The necessary weapons were at once provided by one 
Jean-Frangois Leveille, a notary, and the incorrigible abettor 
of the brigands, serving as a go-between for them with several 
leaders in hiding ; and, in this town, by one Felix Courceuil, 
called le Confesseur, formerly surgeon to the rebel army of la 
Vendee ; both these men are natives of Alengon. Eleven 
muskets were concealed in a house belonging to Bryond in a 
suburb of Alengon ; but this was done without his knowledge, 
for he was at that time living in the country on his estate 
between Alengon and Mortagne. 

“ When Bryond left his wife to go her own way in the fatal 
road she had set out on, these muskets, cautiously removed 
from the house, were carried by the woman Bryond in her 
own carriage to the Castle of Saint-Savin. 

“ It was then that the Department of the Orne and adja- 
cent districts were dismayed by acts of highway robbery that 
startled the authorities as much as the inhabitants of those 
districts which had so long enjoyed quiet ; and these raids 
prove that the atrocious foes of the Government and the Em- 
[Note. — This is contemporary with “ The Chouans.”] 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 98 

pire had been kept informed of the secret coalition of 1809 
by means of communications from abroad. 

“ Leveille the notary, the woman Bryond, Dubut of Caen, 
Herbomez of Mayenne, Boislaurier of le Mans, and Rifoel 
were the ringleaders of the association, which was also joined 
by those criminals who have been already executed under the 
sentence passed on them with Rifoel, by those accused under 
this trial, and by several others who have escaped public ven- 
geance by flight, or by the silence of their accomplices. 

“It was Dubut who, as a resident near Caen, gave notice 
to Leveille of the dispatch of the money. Dubut made several 
journeys between Caen and Mortagne, and Leveille also was 
often on the roads. It may here be noted that, at the time 
when the arms were removed, Leveille, who came to visit 
Bruce, Grenier, and Cibot at Melin’s house, found them ar- 
ranging the muskets in an inside shed, and helped them him- 
self in so doing. 

“ A general meeting was arranged to take place at Mor- 
tagne at the Ecu de France (Crown of France) inn. All the 
accused were present in various disguises. It was on this 
occasion that Leveille, the woman Bryond, Dubut, Herbomez, 
Boislaurier, and Hiley, the cleverest of the subordinate con- 
spirators, of whom Cibot is the most daring, secured the co- 
operation of one Vauthier, called Vieux-Ch6ne, formerly a 
servant to the notorious Longuy, and now a stableman at the 
inn. Vauthier agreed to give the woman Bryond due notice 
of the passing of the chaise conveying the Government 
moneys, as it commonly stopped to bait the horses at the 
inn. 

“The opportunity ere long offered for assembling the brig- 
and recruits who had been scattered about in various lodgings 
with great precaution, sometimes in one village and some- 
times in another, under the care of Courceuil and of L£veill6. 
'The assembly was managed by the woman Bryond, who af- 
forded the brigands a new hiding-place in the uninhabited 


94 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


parts of the Castle of Saint-Savin, at a few miles from Mor- 
tagne, where she had lived with her mother since her hus- 
band’s departure. The brigands established themselves there 
with Hiley at their head, and spent several days there. The 
woman Bryond, with her waiting-maid Godard, took care to 
prepare with her own hands everything needed for lodging 
and feeding these guests. To this end she had trusses of hay 
brought in, and went to see the brigands in the shelter she 
had arranged for them, going to and fro with Leveille. Pro- 
visions were procured under the orders and care of Courceuil, 
Rifoel and Boislaurier giving him instructions. 

“ The principal feat was decided on and the men fully 
armed; the brigands stole out of Saint-Savin every night; 
pending the transit of the Government chest, they carried out 
raids in the neighborhood, and the whole country was in terror 
under their repeated incursions. There can be no doubt that 
the robberies committed at la Sartiniere, at Vonay, and at the 
chateau of Saint-Seny were the work of this band ; their daring 
equaled their villainy, and they contrived to terrify their vic- 
tims so effectually that no tales were told, so that justice could 
obtain no evidence. 

“While levying contributions on all who held possession of 
the nationalized land, the brigands carefully reconnoitred the 
woods of Le Chesnay, which they had chosen to be the scene 
of their crime. 

“ Not far away is the village of Louvigny, where there is an 
inn kept by the brothers Chaussard, formerly gamekeepers on 
the property of Troisville, and this was to be the brigands* 
final rendezvous. The two brothers knew beforehand the part 
they were to play ; Courceuil and Boislaurier had long before 
sounded them, and revived their hatred of the government of 
our august Emperor ; and had told them that among the visitors 
who would drop in on them would be some men of their ac- 
quaintance — the formidable Hiley and the not less formidable 
Cibot. 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


95 


“ In fact, on the 6th the seven highwaymen, under the 
leadership of Hiley, arrived at the brother Chaussards’ tavern 
and spent two days there. On the 8th the chief led out his 
men, saying they were going nine miles away, and he desired 
the hosts to provide food, which was taken to a place where 
the roads met, a little way from the village. Hiley came 
home alone at night. 

“ Two riders — who were probably the woman Bryond and 
Rifoel, for it is said that she accompanied him in his expedi- 
tions, on horseback and dressed as a man — arrived that evening 
and conversed with Hiley. On the following day Hiley wrote 
to Leveille the notary, and one of the Chaussard brothers car- 
ried the letter and brought back the answer. Two hours later 
Bryond and Rifoel came on horseback to speak with Hiley. 

“The upshot of all these interviews and coming and going 
was that a hatchet was indispensable to break open the cases. 
The notary went back with the woman Bryond to Saint-Savin, 
where they sought in vain for a hatchet. 

“ Thereupon he returned to the inn and met Hiley half-way, 
to whom he was to explain that no hatchet was to be found. 
Hiley made his way back and ordered supper at the inn for 
ten persons ; he then brought in the seven brigands all armed. 
Hiley made them pile arms like soldiers. They all sat down 
and supped in haste, Hiley ordering a quantity of food to be 
packed for them to take away with them. Then he led the 
elder Chaussard aside and asked him for a hatchet. The 
tavernkeeper, much astonished, by his own account, refused 
to give him one. Courceuil and Boislaurier presently came 
in, and the three men spent the whole night pacing up and 
down the room and discussing their plan. Courceuil, nick- 
named the Confessor, the most cunning of the band, took 
possession of a hatchet, and at about two in the morning they 
all went out by different doors. 

“Every minute was now precious; the execution of the 
crime was fixed for that day. Hiley, Courceuil, and Be;?- 


96 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


laurier placed their men. Hiley with Minard, Cabot, and 
Bruce, formed an ambush to the right of the wood of Le 
Chesnay. Boislaurier, Grenier, and Horeau occupied the 
centre. Courceuil, Herbomez, and Lisieux stood by the 
ravine under the fringe of the wood. All these positions are 
indicated on the subjoined plan to scale, drawn by the sur- 
veyor to the Government. 

“The chaise, meanwhile, had started from Mortagne at 
about one in the morning, driven by one Rousseau, who was 
so far inculpated by circumstantial evidence as to make it 
seem desirable to arrest him. The vehicle, driving slowly, 
would reach the wood of Le Chesnay by about three. It was 
guarded by a single gendarme ; the men were to breakfast at 
Donnery. There were three travelers, as it happened, beside 
the gendarme. 

“ The driver, who had been walking with them very slowly, 
on reaching the bridge of Le Chesnay, whipped up the horses 
to a speed and energy that the others remarked upon, and 
turned into a cross-road known as the Senzey lane. The 
chaise was soon lost to sight ; the way it had gone was known 
to the gendarme and his companions only by the sound of the 
horses* bells ; the men had to run to come up with it. Then 
they heard a shout : ‘ Stand, you rascals ! * — and four shots 
were fired. 

“The gendarme, who was not hit, drew his sword and ran 
on in the direction he supposed the driver to have taken. He 
was stopped by four men, who all fired ; his eagerness saved 
him, for he rushed past to desire one of the young travelers 
to run on and have the alarm bell tolled at Le Chesnay, but 
two of the brigands taking steady aim, advanced toward him ; 
he was forced to draw back a few steps ; and just as he was 
about to turn the wood, he received a ball in the left armpit, 
which broke his arm ; he fell, and found himself completely 
disabled. 

“ The shouting and shots had been heard at Donnery. The 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


97 


officer in command at this station hurried up with one of his 
gendarmes; a running fire led them away to the side of the 
wood farthest from the scene of the robbery. The single 
gendarme tried to intimidate the brigands by a hue and cry, 
and to delude them into the belief that a force was at hand. 

“ * Forward ! * he cried. ‘ First platoon to the right ! now 
we have them ! Second platoon to the left ! ’ 

“ The brigands on their side shouted : * Draw ! This way, 
comrades ! Send up the men as fast as you can ! * 

“ The noise of firing hindered the officer from hearing the 
cries of the wounded gendarme, and helping in the manoeuvre 
by which the other was keeping the robbers in check ; but he 
could hear a clatter close at hand, arising from splitting the 
cases open. He advanced toward that side ; four armed men 
took aim at him, and he called out, ‘ Surrender, villains ! ’ 

“ They only replied : 1 Stand, or you are a dead man ! * 
“He rushed forward; two muskets were fired, and he was 
hit, one ball going through his left leg and into his horse’s 
flank. The brave man, bleeding profusely, was forced to re- 
tire from the unequal struggle, shouting, but in vain : * Help 
— come on — the brigands are at Le Chesnay.* 

“ The robbers, left masters of the field by superiority of 
numbers, pillaged the chaise which had been intentionally 
driven into a ravine. They blindfolded the driver, but this 
was only a feint. The chests were forced open, and bags of 
money strewed the ground. The horses were unharnessed 
and loaded with the coin. Three thousand francs’ worth of 
•copper money was scornfully left behind ; three hundred thou- 
sand francs were carried off on' four horses. They made for 
the village of Menneville adjacent to the town of Saint-Savin. 

“ The gang and their booty stopped at a solitary house be- 
longing to the Chaussard brothers, inhabited by their uncle, 
one Bourget, who had been in their confidence from the first. 
This old man, helped by his wife, received the brigands, 
warned them to be silent, unloaded the beasts, and then 
7 


98 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


fetched up some wine. The w T ife remained on sentry by the 
castle. The old man led the horses back to the wood and 
returned them to the driver ; then he released the two young 
men who had been gagged as w r ell as the accommodating 
driver. After refreshing themselves in great haste, the brig- 
ands went on their way. Courceuil, Hiley, and Boislaurier 
reviewed their party, and, after bestowing on each a trifling 
recompense, sent off the men, each in a different direction. 

“On reaching a spot called le Champ-Landry, these male- 
factors, obeying the prompting which so often leads such 
wretches into blunders and miscalculations, threw their muskets 
away into a field of standing corn. The fact that all three 
did so at the same time is a crowning proof of their collusion. 
Then, terrified by the boldness and success of their crime, 
they separated. 

“The robbery having been committed, with the additional 
features of violence and attempt to murder, the chain of sub- 
sidiary events was already in preparation, and other actors 
were implicated in receiving and disposing of the stolen 
property. Rifoel, hidden in Paris, whence he pulled all the 
wires of the plot, sent an order to Leveille to forward him 
immediately fifty thousand francs. Courceuil, apt at the 
management of such felonies, had sent off Hiley to inform 
Leveille of their success and of his arrival at Mortagne, where 
the notary at once joined him. 

“ Vauthier, to whose fidelity they believed they might trust, 
undertook to find the Chaussards’ uncle ; he went to the house, 
but was told by the old man that he must apply to the nephews, 
who had given over large surfis to the woman Bryond. How- 
ever he bid Vauthier wait for him on the road, and he there 
gave him a bag containing twelve hundred francs, which 
Vauthier took to the woman Lechantre for her daughter. 

“ By LSveille’s advice Courceuil then went to Bourget, who 
sent him direct to his nephews. The elder Chaussard led 
Vauthier to the wood and showed him a tree beneath which 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


00 


a bag of a thousand francs was found buried. In short, 
Leveille, Hiley, and Vauthier went to and fro several times, 
and each time obtained a small sum, trifling in comparison 
with the whole amount stolen. 

“ These moneys were handed over to the woman Lechantre 
at Mortagne ; and, in obedience to a letter by a messenger 
from her daughter, she carried them to Saint-Savin, whither 
the said Bryond had returned. 

“ It is not now necessary to inquire whether this woman 
Lechantre had any previous knowledge of the plot. For 
the present it need only be noted that she had left Mortagne 
to go to Saint-Savin the day before the crime was committed 
in order to fetch away her daughter ; that the two women 
met half-way, and returned to Mortagne ; that, on the follow- 
ing day, the notary, being informed of this by Hiley, went 
from Alen^on to Mortagne, and straight to their house, where 
he persuaded them to transport the money, obtained with so 
much difficulty from the Chaussards and from Bourget, to a 
certain house in Alempon,- presently to be mentioned as be- 
longing to one Pannier, a merchant there. The woman Le- 
chantre wrote to the man in charge at Saint-Savin to come to 
Mortagne and escort her and her daughter by cross-roads to 
Alengon. The money, amounting to twenty thousand francs 
in all, in sample-sacks and valises, was packed into a vehicle 
at night, the girl Godard helping to dispose of it. 

“The notary had planned the way they were to travel. 
They reached an inn kept by one of their allies, a man 
named Louis Chargegrain, in the hamlet of Littray. But in 
spite of the notary’s precautions — he riding ahead of the 
chaise — some strangers were present and saw the valises and 
bags taken out which contained the coin. 

“But just as Courceuil and Hiley, disguised as women, 
were consulting, in the market-square at Alen^on, with the 
aforenamed Pannier — who since 1794 had been the rebel’s 
treasurer, and who was devoted to Rifoel — as to the best means 


100 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


of transmitting the required sum to Rifoel, the terror occa- 
sioned by the arrests and inquiries already made was so great 
that the woman Lechantre, in her alarm, set off at night from 
the inn where they were, and fled with her daughter by 
country byways, leaving Leveille behind, and took refuge in 
the hiding-places known to them in Saint-Savin Castle. The 
same alarm came over the other criminals. Courceuil, Bois- 
laurier, and his relation Dubut exchanged two thousand francs 
in silver for gold at a dealer’s and fled across Brittany to 
England. 

“ On arriving at Saint-Savin, the mother and daughter 
heard that Bourget was arrested with the driver and the run- 
away conscripts. 

“The magistrates, the police, and the authorities acted 
with so much decision that the gang deemed it necessary to 
protect the woman Bryond from their investigations, for all 
these felons were devotedly attached to her, and she had won 
the affections of them all. So she was removed from Saint- 
Savin, and hid at first at Alen^on, where her adherents held 
council and succeeded in concealing her in Pannier’s cellars. 

“ Hereupon fresh incidents occurred. After the arrest of 
Bourget and his wife, the Chaussards refused to give up any 
more money, saying they had been betrayed. This unex- 
pected defection fell out at the very moment when all the 
conspirators were in the greatest need of supplies, if only as a 
means of escape. Rifoel was thirsting for money. Hiley, 
Cibot, and Leveille now began to doubt the honesty of the 
two Chaussards. This led to a fresh complication which 
seems to demand the intervention of the law. 

“Two gendarmes, commissioned to discover the woman 
Bryond, succeeded in getting into Pannier’s house, where 
they were present at a council held by the criminals ; but 
these men, false to the confidence placed in them, instead of 
arresting Bryond, were enslaved by her charms. These ras- 
cally soldiers — named Ratel and Mallet — showed the woman 


THE SEAMY SIDE OE HISTORY. 


101 


every form of interest and devotion, and offered to escort her 
to the Chaussards’ inn and compel them to make restitution. 
The woman went off on horseback, dressed as a man, and 
accompanied by Ratel, Mallet, and the maidservant Godard. 
She set out at night, and on reaching the inn she and one of 
the Chaussard brothers had a private but animated interview. 
She had a pistol, and was resolved to blow her accomplice’s 
brains out in case of his refusal ; in fact, he led her to the 
wood, and she brought back a heavy sack. In it she found 
copper coin and twelve-sou silver-pieces to the value of fifteen 
hundred francs. 

“It was then suggested that as many of the conspirators as 
could be got together should take the Chaussards by surprise, 
seize them, and put them to torture. Pannier, on hearing of 
this disappointment, flew into a rage and broke out in threats; 
and though the woman Bryond threatened him in return with 
Rifoel’s vengeance, she was compelled to fly. 

“All these facts were confessed by Ratel. 

“ Mallet, touched by her position, offered the woman Bry- 
ond a place of shelter ; they all set off together and spent the 
night in the Troisville forest. Then Mallet and Ratel, with 
Hiley and Cibot, went by night to the Chaussards’ tavern, 
but they found that the brothers had left the place, and that 
the remainder of the money had certainly been removed. 

“This was the last attempt on the part of the conspirators 
to recover the stolen money. 

“ It is now important to define more accurately the part 
played by each of the criminals implicated in this affair. 

“ Dubut, Boislaurier, Gentil, Herbomez, Courceuil, and 
Hiley are all leaders, some in council, and some in action. 
Boislaurier, Dubut, and Courceuil, all three contumacious 
deserters, are habitual rebels, stirring up troubles, the implac- 
able foes of Napoleon the Great, of his victories, his dynasty, 
and his government, of our new code of laws and of the Im- 
perial constitution. Herbomez and Hiley, as their right-hand 


102 


THE SEAMY SIDE OE HISTORY. 


men, boldly carried out what the three others planned. The 
guilt of the seven instruments of the crime is beyond question 
— Cibot, Lisieux, Grenier, Bruce, Horeau, Cabot, and Min- 
ard. It is proved by the depositions of those who are now 
in the hands of justice. Lisieux died during the preliminary 
inquiry, and Bruce has evaded capture. 

“ The conduct of the chaise-driver Rousseau marks him as 
an accomplice. The slow progress on the highroad, the pace 
to which he flogged the horses on reaching the woods, his 
persistent statement that his head was muffled, whereas, by 
the evidence of the young fellow-travelers, the leader of the 
brigands had the handkerchief removed and ordered him to 
recognize the men — all contribute to afford presumptive evi- 
dence of his collusion. 

“As to the woman Bryond and Leveille the notary, their 
complicity was constant and continuous from the first. They 
supplied funds and means for the crime; they knew of it and 
abetted it. Leveille was constantly traveling to and fro. The 
woman Bryond invented plot upon plot ; she risked everything 
— even her life — to secure the money. She lent her house, 
her carriage, and was concerned in the plot from the begin- 
ning, nor did she attempt to persuade the chief leader to desist 
from it when she might have exerted her evil influence to 
hinder it. She led the maidservant Godard into its toils. 
Leveille was so entirely mixed up in it that it was he who 
tried to procure the hatchet needed by the robbers. 

“ The woman Bourget, Vauthier, the Chaussards, Pannier, 
the woman Lechantre, Mallet, and Ratel were all incriminated 
in various degrees, as also the innkeepers Melin, Binet, Lara- 
vini£re, and Chargegrain. 

“ Bourget died during the preliminary inquiry, after making 
a confession which leaves no doubt as to the part taken by 
Vauthier and the woman Bryond ; and though he tried to 
mitigate the charge against his wife and his nephews the 
Chaussards, the reasons for his reticence are self-evident. 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


103 


“ But the Chaussards certainly knew that they were supply- 
ing provisions to highway robbers ; they saw that the men 
were armed, and were informed of all their scheme ; they al- 
lowed them to take the hatchet needed for breaking open the 
chests, knowing the purpose for which it was required. Fi- 
nally, they received wittingly the money obtained by the 
robbery, they hid it, and in fact made aw'ay with the greater 
part of it. 

“ Pannier, formerly treasurer to the rebel party, concealed 
the woman Bryond ; he is one of the most dangerous partici- 
pators in the plot, of which he was informed from its origin. 
With regard to him we are in the dark as to some circum- 
stances as yet unknown, but of which justice will take cogni- 
zance. He is RifoeTs immediate ally and in all the secrets of 
the ante-revolutionary party in the West ; he greatly regretted 
the fact that Rifoel should have admitted the women into the 
plot or have trusted them at all. He forwarded money to 
Rifoel and received the stolen coin. 

“As to the two gendarmes, Ratel and Mallet, their conduct 
most justly deserves the utmost rigor of the law. They were 
traitors to their duty. One of them, foreseeing his fate, com- 
mitted suicide after making some important revelations. The 
other, Mallet, denied nothing, and his tacit confession re- 
moves all doubt. 

“ The woman Lechantre, in spite of her persistent denials, 
was informed of everything. The hypocrisy of this woman, 
who attempts to shelter her professed innocence under the 
practice of assumed devotion, is known by her antecedents to 
be prompt and intrepid in extremities. She asserts that she 
was deceived by her daughter, and believed that the money 
in question belonged to the man Bryond. The trick is too 
transparent. If Bryond had had any money, he would not 
have fled from the neighborhood to avoid witnessing his own 
ruin. Lechantre considered that there was no harm in the 
robbery when it was approved of by her ally Boislaurier. 


101 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


But how, then, does she account for RifoSl’s presence at 
Saint-Savin, her daughter’s expeditions and connection with 
the man, and the visit of the brigands who were waited on by 
the woman Godard and Bryond ? She says she sleeps heavily, 
and is in the habit of going to bed at seven o’clock, and did 
not know what answer to make when the examining judge 
observed that then she must rise at daybreak, and could not 
have failed to discern the traces of the plot and of the presence 
of so many men, or to be uneasy about her daughter’s noc- 
turnal expeditions. To this she could only say that she was 
at her prayers. 

“ The woman is a model hypocrite. In fact, her absence 
on the day when the crime was committed, the care she took 
to remove her daughter to Mortagne, her journey with the 
money, and her precipitate flight when everything was dis- 
covered, the care with which she hid herself, and the circum- 
stances of her arrest, all prove her complicity from the incho- 
ation of the plot. Her conduct was not that of a mother 
anxious to explain the danger to her daughter and to save her 
from it, but that of a terrified accomplice ; and she was an 
accessory, not out of foolish affection, but from party spirit 
inspired by hatred, as is well known, for His Imperial Majesty’s 
government. Maternal weakness indeed could not excuse her, 
and it must not be forgotten that consent, long premeditated, 
is an evident sign of her complicity. 

“ Not the crime alone, but its moving spirits, are now 
known. We see in it the monstrous combination of the 
delirium of faction with a thirst for rapine ; murder prompted 
by party spirit, under which men take shelter, and justify 
themselves for the most disgraceful excesses. The orders of 
the leaders was the signal for the robbery of State moneys to 
pay for subsequent violence; base and ferocious mercenaries 
were found to do it for wretched pay, and fully prepared to 
meet resistance with murder ; while the agitators to rebellion, 
not less guilty, helped in dividing and concealing the booty. 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


105 


What society can allow such attempts to go unpunished ? The 
law has no adequate punishment. 

‘‘The Bench of this Criminal and Special Court, then, will 
be called upon to decide whether the aforenamed Herbomez, 
Hiley, Cibot, Grenier, Horeau, Cabot, Minard, Melin, Binet, 
Laraviniere, Rousseau, the woman Bryond, Leveille, the 
woman Bourget, Vauthier, the elder Chaussard, Pannier, the 
widow Lechantre, and Mallet — all hereinbefore described and 
in presence of the Court — and the aforenamed Boislaurier, 
Dubut, Courceuil, Bruce, Chaussard the younger, Chargegrain, 
and the girl Godard, being absent or having fled, are or are 
not guilty of the acts described in this bill of indictment. 

“ Given in the Court at Caen this ist of December, 180 — 
“ (Signed) Baron Bourlac, 

‘ ‘ Attorney- General. ’ * 

This legal document, much shorter and more peremptory 
than such bills of indictment are in these days, so full of de- 
tail and so complete on every point, especially as to the pre- 
vious career of the accused, excited Godefroid to the utmost. 
The bare, dry style of an official pen, setting forth, in red 
ink, as it were, the principal facts of the case, was enough to 
set his imagination working. Concise, reserved narrative is 
to some minds a problem in which they lose themselves in 
exploring the mysterious depths. 

In the dead of night, stimulated by the silence, by the 
darkness, by the dreadful connection hinted at by Monsieur 
Alain of this document with Madame de la Chanterie, Gode- 
froid concentrated all his intelligence on the consideration of 
this terrible affair. 

The name of Lechantre was evidently the first name of the 
la Chanterie family, whose aristocratic titular name had of 
course been curtailed under the Republic and the Empire. 

His fancy painted the scenery where the drama was played, 
find the figures of the accomplices rose before him. Imagina- 


106 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 

tion showed him, not indeed “the aforenamed Rifoel,” but 
the Chevalier du Vissard, a youth resembling Walter Scott’s 
Fergus — in short, a French edition of the Jacobite. He 
worked out a romance on the passion of a young girl grossly 
betrayed by her husband’s infamy — a tragedy then very fash- 
ionable — and in love with a young leader rebelling against 
the Emperor ; rushing headlong, like Diana Vernon, into the 
toils of a conspiracy, fired with enthusiasm, and then, having 
started on the perilous descent, unable to check her wild 
career. Had it ended on the scaffold ? 

A whole world seemed to rise before Godefroid. He was 
wandering through the groves of Normandy; he could see 
the Breton gentleman and Madame Bryond in the copse ; he 
dwelt in the old Castle of Saint-Savin ; he pictured the win- 
ning over of so many conspirators — the notary, the merchant, 
and the bold Chouan leaders. He could understand the 
almost unanimous adhesion of a district where the memory 
was still fresh of the famous Marche-a-Terre, of the Comtes 
de Bauvan and de Longuy, of the massacre at la Vivetiere, 
and of the death of the Marquis de Montauran, of whose ex- 
ploits he had heard from Madame de la Chanterie. 

This vision, as it were, of men and things and places, was 
but brief. As he realized the fact that this story was that of 
the noble and pious old lady whose virtues affected him to the 
point of a complete metamorphosis, Godefroid, with a thrill 
of awe, took up the second document given to him by Mon- 
sieur Alain, which bore the title ; 

“An Appeal on behalf of Madame Henrtette Bryond 
des Tours-Minieres, nig Lechantre de la Chanterie.” 

“That settles it,” thought Godefroid. 

The paper ran as follows : 

“We are condemned and guilty; but if ever the sovereign 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


107 


had cause to exercise his prerogative of mercy, would it not 
be under the circumstances herein set forth ? 

“ The culprit is a young woman, who says she is about to 
become a mother, and is condemned to death. 

“ On the threshold of the prison, and in view of the scaffold, 
this woman will tell the truth. That statement will be in her 
favor, and to that she looks for pardon. 

“ The case, tried in the Criminal Court of Alen^on, pre- 
sents some obscure features, as do all cases where several 
accused persons have combined in a plot inspired by party 
feeling. 

“ His Imperial and Kingly Majesty’s Privy Council are 
now fully informed as to the identity of a mysterious person- 
age, known as Me Marchand,’ whose presence in the depart- 
ment of the Orne was not disputed by the public authorities 
in the course of the trial, though the pleader for the Crown 
did not think it advisable to produce him in Court, and the 
defendants had no right to call him, nor, indeed, power to 
produce him. 

“This man, as is well known to the Bench, to the local 
authorities, to the Paris police, and to the Imperial and Royal 
Council, is Bernard-Polydor Bryond des Tours-Minieres, who, 
since 1794, has been in correspondence with the Comte de 
Lille ; he is known abroad as the Baron des Tours-Minieres, 
and in the records of the Paris police as Contenson. 

“ He is a very exceptional man, whose youth and rank were 
stained by unremitting vice, such utter immorality and such 
criminal excesses, that so infamous a life would inevitably 
have ended on the scaffold but for the skill with which he 
played a double part under shelter of his two names. Still, 
as he is more and more the slave of his passions and insatiable 
necessities, he will at last fall below infamy, and find himself 
in the lowest depths, in spite of indisputable gifts and an 
extraordinary mind. 

“ When the Comte de Lille’s better judgment led to his 

R 


108 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


forbidding Bryond to draw money from abroad, the man tried 
to get out of the blood-stained field on to which his necessities 
had led him. Was it that this career no longer paid him 
well enough ? Or was it remorse or shame that led the man 
back to the district where his estates, loaded with debt when 
he went away, could have but little to yield even to his skill ? 
This it is impossible to believe. It seems more probable that 
he had some mission to fulfill in those departments where 
some sparks were still lingering of the civil broils and covert 
rebellions. 

“ When wandering through the provinces, where his per- 
fidious adhesion to the schemes of the English and of the 
Comte de Lille gained him the confidence of certain families 
still attached to the party that the genius of our immortal 
Emperor had reduced to silence, he met one of the former 
leaders of the Rebellion — a man with whom he had had deal- 
ings as an envoy from abroad at the time of the Quiberon 
expedition, during the last rising in the year VII. He en- 
couraged the hopes of this agitator, who has since paid the 
penalty of his treasonable plots on the scaffold. At that time, 
then, Bryond was able to learn all the secrets of the incorrigi- 
ble faction who misprize the glory of His Majesty the Emperor 
Napoleon I., and the true interests of the country as repre- 
sented by his sacred person. 

“ At the age of five-and-thirty, this man, who affected the 
deepest piety, who professed unbounded devotion to the in- 
terests of the Comte de Lille, and perfect adoration for the 
rebels of the West who perished in the struggle, who skillfully 
disguised the ravages of a youth of debauchery, and whose 
personal appearance was in his favor, came, under the protec- 
tion of his creditors, who told no tales, and of the most extra- 
ordinary good-nature on the part of all the ci-devants of the 
district, to be introduced with all these claims on her regard 
to the woman Lechantre, who was supposed to have a very fine 
fortune. The scheme in view was to secure a marriage be- 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


109 


tween Madame Lechantre’s only daughter, Henriette, and 
this protege of the Royalist party. 

‘‘Priests, ex*nobles, and creditors, all from different mo- 
tives, conspired to promote the marriage between Bernard 
Bryond and Henriette Lechantre. 

“The good judgment of the notary who took charge of 
Madame Lechantre’s affairs, and his shrewd suspicions, led 
perhaps to the poor girl’s undoing. For Monsieur Chesnel, 
a notary at Alengon, settled the lands of Saint-Savin, the 
bride’s sole estate, on her and her children, reserving a small 
charge on it and the right of residence to the mother for life. 

“ Bryond’s creditors, who, judging from her methodical 
and economical style of living, had supposed that Madame 
Lechantre must have saved large sums, were disappointed in 
their hopes, and, believing that she must be avaricious, they 
sued Bryond, and this led to a revelation of his impecuniosity 
and difficulties. 

“ Then the husband and wife quarreled violently, and the 
young woman came to full knowledge of the dissipated habits, 
the atheistical opinions both in religion and in politics, nay, 
I may say, the utter infamy, of the man to whom fate had 
irrevocably bound her. Then Bryond, being obliged to let 
his wife into the secret of the atrocious plots against the Im- 
perial Government, offered an asylum under his roof to Rifoel 
du Vissard. 

“ Rifoel’s character — adventurous, brave, and lavish — had 
an extraordinary charm for all who came under his influence ; 
of this there is abundant proof in the cases tried in no less 
than three special criminal courts. 

“ The irresistible influence, in fact the absolute power, he 
acquired over a young woman who found herself at the bottom 
of a gulf, is only too evident in the catastrophe of which the 
horror brings her as a suppliant to the foot of the throne. 
And His Imperial and Kingly Majesty’s Council will have no 
difficulty in verifying the infamous collusion of Bryond, who, 


no 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


far from doing his duty as the guide and adviser of the girl 
intrusted to his care by the mother he had deceived, condoned 
and encouraged the intimacy between his wife Henriette and 
the rebel leader. 

“This was the plan imagined by this detestable man, who 
makes it his glory that he respects nothing, and that he never 
considers any end but the gratification of his passions, while 
he regards every sentiment based on social or religious mo- 
rality as a mere vulgar prejudice. And it may here be re- 
marked that such scheming is habitual to a man who has been 
playing a double part ever since 1794, who for eight years has 
deceived the Comte de Lille and his adherents, probably de- 
ceiving at the same time the superior police of the Empire — 
for such men are always ready to serve the highest bidder. 

“Bryond, then, was urging Rifoel to commit a crime; he 
it was who insisted on an armed attack and highway .robbery 
of the State treasure in transit, and on heavy contributions to 
be extorted from the purchasers of the national land, by 
means of atrocious tortures which he invented, and which 
carried terror into five Departments. He demanded no less 
than three hundred thousand francs to pay off the mortgages 
on his property. 

“In the event of any objection on the part of Rifoel or 
Madame Bryond, he intended to revenge himself for the con- 
tempt he had inspired in his wife’s upright mind by handing 
them both over to be dealt with by the law as soon as they 
should commit some capital crime. 

“As soon as he perceived that party spirit was a stronger 
motive than self-interest in these two whom he had thus 
thrown together, he disappeared ; he came to Paris, armed 
with ample information as to the state of affairs in the western 
departments. 

“ The Chaussard brothers and Vauthier were, it is well 
known, in constant correspondence with Bryond. 

“As soon as the robbery on the chests from Caen was ac- 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTOR Y. 


Ill 


complished, Bryond, assuming the name of le Marchand, 
opened secret communications with the prefect and the magis- 
trates. What was the consequence ? No conspiracy of equal 
extent, and in which so many persons in such different grades 
of the social scale were involved, has ever been so immedi- 
ately divulged to justice as this, of which the first attempt was 
the robbery of the treasure from Caen. Within six days of the 
crime, all the guilty parties had been watched and followed 
with a certainty that betrays perfect knowledge of the persons 
in question, and of their plans. The arrest, trial, and execu- 
tion of Rifoel and his companions are a sufficient proof, and 
mentioned here only to demonstrate our knowledge of this 
fact, of which the Supreme Council knows every particular. 

“ If ever a condemned criminal might hope for the clem- 
ency of the sovereign, may not Henriette Lechantre? 

“ Carried away by a passion and by rebellious principles 
imbibed with her mother’s milk, she is, no doubt, unpardon- 
able in the eye of the law ; but, in the sight of our most mag- 
nanimous Emperor, may not the most shameless betrayal on 
one hand, and the most vehement enthusiasm on the other, 
plead her cause ? 

“ The greatest of Generals, the immortal genius who par- 
doned the Prince of Hatzfeld, and who, like God Himself, 
can divine the arguments suggested by a blind passion, may, 
perhaps, vouchsafe to consider the temptations invincible in 
the young, which may palliate her crime, great as it is. 

1 ‘ Twenty-two heads have already fallen under the sword 
of justice and the sentence of the three courts. One alone 
remains — that of a young woman of twenty, not yet of age. 
Will not the Emperor Napoleon the Great grant her time for 
repentance? Is not that a tribute to the grace of God? 

“ For Henriette Lechantre, wife of Bryond des Tours- 
Minidres, Bordin, 

« Retained for the defense, Advocate in the Lower 
Court of the Department of the Seine.’' 


312 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY 


This terrible tragedy haunted the little sleep Godefroid was 
able to get. He dreamed of decapitation, as the physician 
Guillotin perfected it with philanthropic intentions. Through 
the hot vapors of a nightmare he discerned a beautiful young 
woman, full of enthusiasm, undergoing the last preparations, 
drawn in a cart, and mounting the scaffold with a cry of 
“ Long live the King ! ” 

Godefroid was goaded by curiosity. He rose at daybreak, 
dressed, and paced his room, till at length he posted himself 
at the window, and mechanically stared at the sky, recon- 
structing the drama, as a modern romancer might, in several 
volumes. And always against the murky background of 
Chouans, of country-folk, of provincial gentlemen, of rebel 
leaders, police agents, lawyers and spies, he saw the radiant 
figures of the mother and daughter ; of the daughter deceiving 
her mother, the victim of a wretch, and of her mad passion 
for one of those daring adventurers who were afterward 
regarded as heroes — a man who, to Godefroid’s imagination, 
had points of resemblance to Georges Cadoudal and Charette, 
and the giants of the struggle between the Republic and the 
Monarchy. 

As soon as Godefroid heard old Alain stirring, he went to 
his room ; but, on looking in through the half-opened door, 
he shut it again, and withdrew. The old man, kneeling on 
his prie-Dieu, was saying his morning prayers. The sight ot 
that white head bent in an attitude of humble piety recalled 
Godefroid to a sense of duty, and he prayed, too, with fervency. 

“I was expecting you,” said the good man when, at the 
end of a quarter of an hour, Godefroid entered his room. “ I 
anticipated your impatience, and rose earlier than usual.” 

“ Madame Henriette ? ” Godefroid began, with evi- 

dent agitation. 

“Was madame’s daughter,” replied Alain, interrupting 
him. “ Madame’s name is Lechantre de la Chanterie. 
Under the Empire old titles were not recognized, nor the 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


113 


names added to the patronymic or first surname. Thus the 
Baronne des Tours-Minieres was * the woman Bryond ; ’ the 
Marquis d’Esgrignon was called Carol — Citizen Carol, and 
afterward the Sieur Carol ; the Troisvilles were the Sieurs 
Guibelin.” 

“ But what was the end ? Did the Emperor pardon her ? ” 

“ No, alas!” said Alain. “The unhappy little woman 
perished on the scaffold at the age of twenty-one. After 
reading Bordin’s petition, the Emperor spoke to the Supreme 
Judge much to this effect : 

“ ‘ Why make an example of a spy? A secret agent ceases 
to be a man, and ought to have none of a man’s feelings ; he 
is but a wheel in the machine. Bryond did his duty. If our 
instruments of that kind were not what they are — steel bars, in- 
telligent only in behalf of the Government they serve — govern- 
ment would be impossible. The sentences of Special Criminal 
Courts must be carried out, or my magistrates would lose all 
confidence in themselves and in me. And, beside, the men 
who fought for these people are executed, and they were less 
guilty than their leaders. The women of the western pro- 
vinces must be taught not to meddle in conspiracies. It is 
because the victim of the sentence is a woman that the law 
must take its course. No excuse is available as against the 
interests of authority.’ 

“This was the substance of what the Supreme Judge was 
so obliging as to repeat to Bordin after his interview with the 
Emperor. To re-establish tranquillity in the west, which was 
full of refractory conscripts, Napoleon thought it needful to 
produce a real ‘terror.’ The Supreme Judge, in fact, advised 
the lawyer to trouble himself no further about his clients.” 

“And the lady?” said Godefroid. 

“ Madame de la Chanterie was condemned to twenty-two 
years’ imprisonment,” replied Alain. “ She had already been 
transferred to Bicetre, near Rouen, to undergo her sentence, 
and nothing could be thought of till her Henriette was safe ; 

8 


114 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


for after these dreadful scenes, she was so wrapped up in her 
daughter that, but for Bordin’s promise to petition for the 
mitigation of the sentence of death, it was thought that mad- 
ame would not have survived her condemnation. So they 
deceived the poor mother. She saw her (laughter after the 
execution of the men who had been sentenced to death, but 
did not know that the respite was granted in consequence of a 
false declaration that her daughter was expecting her confine- 
ment.” 

“Ah, now I understand everything ! ” cried Godefroid. 

“ No, my dear boy. There are some things which cannot 
be guessed. For a long time after that, madame believed that 
her daughter was alive.” 

“ How is that? ” 

“ When Madame des Tours-Mini£res heard through Bordin 
that her appeal was rejected, the brave little woman had 
enough strength of mind to write a score of letters dated for 
several months after her execution to make her mother believe 
that she was still alive, but gradually suffering more and more 
from an imaginary malady, and it would end in death. These 
letters were spread over a period of two years. Thus Madame 
de la Chanterie was prepared for her daughter’s death, but for 
a natural death ; she did not hear of her execution till 1814. 

“ For two years she was kept in the common prison with 
the most infamous creatures of her sex, wearing the prison 
dress; then, thanks to the efforts of the Champignelles and 
the Beauseants, after the second year she was placed in a pri- 
vate cell, where she lived like a cloistered nun.” 

“And the others? ” 

“ The notary Leveille, Herbomez, Hiley, Cibot, Grenier, 
Horeau, Cabot, Minard, and Mallet were condemned to death, 
and executed the same day ; Pannier, with Chaussard and 
Vauthier, was sentenced to twenty years* penal servitude; 
they were branded and sent to the hulks ; but the Emperor 
pardoned Chaussard and Vauthier. Melin, Laraviniere, and 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


115 


Binet had five years’ imprisonment. The woman Bourget 
was imprisoned for twenty-two years. Chargegrain and Rous- 
seau were acquitted. Those who had gotten away were all 
sentenced to death, with the exception of the maidservant 
Godard, who, as you will have guessed, is none other than 
our good Manon.” 

“ Manon ! ” exclaimed Godefroid in amazement. 

“Oh, you do not yet know Manon,” replied the worthy 
man. “That devoted soul, condemned to twenty-two years’ 
imprisonment, had given herself up to justice that she might 
be with Madame de la Chanterie in prison. Our beloved 
vicar is the priest from Mortagne who gave the last sacrament 
to Madame des Tours-Mini^res, who had the fortitude to 
escort her to the scaffold, and to whom she gave her last 
farewell kiss. The same brave and exalted priest had attended 
the Chevalier du Vissard. So our dear Abbe de Veze learned 
all the secrets of the conspirators.” 

“ I see now when his hair turned white,” said Godefroid. 

“Alas!” said Alain. “He received from Amedee du 
Vissard a miniature of Madame des Tours-Minieres, the only 
likeness of her that exists ; and the abbe has been a sacred 
personage to Madame de la Chanterie ever since the day when 
she was restored triumphant to social life.” 

“How was that?” asked Godefroid in surprise. 

“Well, on the restoration of Louis XVIII. in 1814, Bois- 
laurier, who was the younger brother of Monsieur de Bois- 
frelon, was still under the King’s orders to organize a rising in 
the west — first in 1809, and afterward in 1812. Their name 
is Dubut; the Dubut of Caen was related to them. There 
were three brothers: Dubut de Boisfranc, president of the 
court of subsidies ; Dubut de Boisfrelon, councilor-at-law ; 
and Dubut-Boislaurier, a captain of dragoons. Their father 
had given each the name of one of his three several estates to 
give them a title and status {savonnette a la vilain [wash-ball 
for the base-born] as it was called), for their grandfather was a 


116 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 

linen merchant. Dubut of Caen, who succeeded in escaping, 
was one of the branch who had stuck to trade ; but he hoped, by 
devoting himself to the Royal cause, to be allowed to succeed 
to Monsieur de Boisfranc’s title. And in fact Louis XVIII. 
gratified the wish of his faithful adherent, who, in 1815* was 
made grand provost, and subsequently became a public prose- 
cutor under the name of Boisfranc ; he was president of one 
of the higher courts when he died. The Marquis du Vissard, 
the unhappy chevalier’s elder brother, created peer of France, 
and loaded with honors by the King, was made lieutenant 
of the Maison Rouge, and when that was abolished became 
prefect. Monsieur d’Herbomez had a brother who was made 
a count and receiver-general. The unfortunate banker Pan- 
nier died on the hulks of a broken heart. Boislaurier died 
childless, a lieutenant-general and governor of one of the 
royal residences. 

“ Madame de la Chanterie was presented to his majesty by 
Monsieur de Champignelles, Monsieur de Beauseant, the Due 
de Verneuil, and the keeper of the seals. 4 You have suffered 
much for me, Madame la Baronne,’ said the King; ‘you 
have every claim on my favor and gratitude.’ 

“ ‘ Sire,’ she replied, ‘ your majesty has so much to do in 
comforting the sufferers, that I will not add the burden of an 
inconsolable sorrow. To live forgotten, to mourn for my 
daughter, and do some good — that is all I have to live for. 
If anything could mitigate my grief, it would be the gracious- 
ness of my sovereign, and the happiness of seeing that Provi- 
dence did not suffer so much devoted service to be wasted.’ ” 

“And what did the King do?” asked Godefroid. 

“ He restored to Madame de la Chanterie two hundred 
thousand francs in money,” said the good man, “for the 
estate of Saint-Savin had been sold to make good the loss to 
the treasury. The letters of pardon granted to Madame la 
Baronne and her woman express the sovereign’s regret for all 
they had endured in his service, while acknowledging that the 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


117 


zeal of his adherents had carried them too far in action ; but 
the thing that will seem to you most horrible of all is, that 
throughout his reign Bryond was still the agent of his secret 
police.” 

“ Oh, what things kings can do ! ” cried Godefroid. “ And 
is the wretch still living ? ” 

“ No. The scoundrel, who at any rate concealed his name, 
calling himself Contenson, died at the end of 1829, or early 
in 1830. He fell from a roof into the street when in pursuit 
of a criminal. Louis XVIII. was of the same mind as Napo- 
leon as regards police agents. 

“ Madame de la Chanterie, a perfect saint, prays for this 
monster’s soul, and has two masses said for him every year. 

“ Though her defense was undertaken by one of the famous 
pleaders of the day, the father of one of our great orators, 
Madame de la Chanterie, who knew nothing of her daughter’s 
risks till the moment when the money was brought in — and 
even then only because Boislaurier, who was related to her, 
told her the facts — could never establish her innocence. The 
President du Ronceret, and Blondet, vice-president of the 
court at Alempon, vainly tried to clear the poor lady ; the 
influence of the notorious Mergi, the councilor to the supreme 
court under the Empire, who presided over these trials — a 
man fanatically devoted to the church and throne, who after- 
ward, as public prosecutor, brought many a Bonapartist head 
under the axe — was so great at this time over his two col- 
leagues that he secured the condemnation of the unhappy 
Baronne de la Chanterie. Bourlac and Mergi argued the 
case with incredible virulence. The president always spoke 
of the Baronne des Tours-Minieres as the woman Bryond, 
and of madame as the woman Lechantre. The names of all 
the accused were reduced to the barest Republican forms, ana 
curtailed of all titles. 

“There were some extraordinary features of the trial, and 
I cannot recall them all ; but I remember one stroke of auda- 


118 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


city, which may show you what manner of men these Chouans 
were. The crowd that pressed to hear the trials was beyond 
anything your fancy can conceive of ; it filled the corridors, 
and the square outside was thronged as if on the market-days. 
One morning at the opening of the court, before the arrival 
of the judges, Pille-Miche, the famous Chouan, sprang over 
the balustrade into the middle of the mob, made play with 
his elbows, mixed with the crowd, and fled among the terrified 
spectators, * butting like a wild boar,’ as Bordin told me. 
The gendarmes and the people rushed to stop him, and he 
was caught on the steps just as he had reached the market- 
place. After this daring attempt, they doubled the guard, 
and a detachment of men-at-arms was posted on the square, 
for it was feared that there might be among the crowd some 
Chouans ready to aid and abet the accused. Three persons 
were crushed to death in the crowd in consequence of this 
attempt. 

“ It was subsequently discovered that Contenson — for, like 
my old friend Bordin, I cannot bring myself to call him 
Baron des Tours-Minieres, or Bryond, which is a respectable 
old name — that wretch, it was discovered, had made away 
with sixty thousand francs of the stolen treasure. He gave 
ten thousand to the younger Chaussard, whom he enticed 
into the police and inoculated with all his low tastes and 
vices ; but all his accomplices were unlucky. The Chaussard 
who escaped was pitched into the sea by Monsieur de Bois- 
laurier, who understood from something said by Pannier that 
Chaussard had turned traitor. Contenson indeed had advised 
him to join the fugitives in order to spy upon them. Vauthier 
was killed in Paris, no doubt by one of the Chevalier du Vis- 
sard’s obscure but devoted followers. The younger Chaus- 
sard, too, was finally murdered in one of the nocturnal raids 
conducted by the police ; it seems probable that Contenson 
took this means of ridding himself of his demands or of his 
remorse by * sending him to sermon,’ as the saying goes. 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


110 


“ Madame de la Chanterie invested her money in the Funds, 
and purchased this house by the particular desire of her uncle, 
the old Councilor de Boisfrelon, who in fact gave her the 
money to buy it. This quiet neighborhood lies close to the 
archbishop’s residence, where our beloved abbe has an ap- 
pointment under the cardinal. And this was madame’s chief 
reason for acceding to the old lawyer’s wish when his income, 
after twenty-five years of revolutions, was reduced to six 
thousand francs a year. Beside, madame wished to close a 
life of such terrible misfortunes as had overwhelmed her for 
six-and-twenty years in almost cloistered seclusion. 

4 4 You may now understand the dignity, the majesty, of this 
long-suffering woman — august, indeed, as I may say ” 

44 Yes,” said Godefroid, 44 the stamp of all she has endured 
has given her an indefinable air of grandeur and majesty.” 

44 Each blow, each fresh pang has but increased her patience 
and resignation,” Alain went on. “And if you could know 
her as we do, if you knew how keen her feelings are, and how 
active is the spring of tenderness that wells up in her heart, 
you would be afraid to take count of the tears she must shed, 
and her fervent prayers that ascend to God. Only those who, 
like her, have known but a brief season of happiness can resist 
such shocks. Hers is a tender heart, a gentle soul clothed 
in a frame of steel, tempered by privation, toil, and aus- 
terity.” 

“ Such a life as hers explains the life of hermits,” said 
Godefroid. 

“ There are days when I wonder what can be the meaning 
of such an existence. Is it that God reserves these utmost, 
bitterest trials for those of His creatures who shall sit on His 
right hand on the day after their death?” said the good old 
man, quite unaware that he was artlessly expressing Sweden- 
borg’s doctrine concerning the angels. 

“ What ! ” exclaimed Godefroid, 44 Madame de la Chanterie 
was mixed up with ” 


120 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


4 ‘ Madame was sublime in prison,” Alain said. “In the 
course of three years the story of the Vicar of Wakefield came 
true, for she reclaimed several women of profligate lives. And 
in the course of her imprisonment, as she took note of the 
conduct of those confined with her, she learned to feel that 
great pity for the misery of the people which weighs on her 
soul, and has made her the queen of Parisian charity. It was in 
the horrible Bicdtre of Rouen that she conceived of the plan 
which we devote ourselves to carry out. It was, as she de- 
clared, a dream of rapture, an angelic inspiration in the midst 
of hell ; she had no thought of ever seeing it realized. 

“But here, in 1819, when peace seemed to be descending 
on Paris, she came back to her dream. Madame la Duchesse 
d’Angoul£me — the dauphiness, the Duchesse de Berri, the arch- 
bishop, and then the chancellor and some pious persons con- 
tributed very liberally to the first necessary expenses. The 
fund was increased by what we could spare from our income, 
for each of us spends no more than is absolutely necessary.” 

Tears rose to Godefroid’s eyes. 

“ We are the faithful priesthood of a Christian idea, and be- 
long, body and soul, to this work, of which Madame de la 
Chanterie is the founder and the soul — that lady whom you 
hear us respectfully designate as Madame.” 

“Ah, and I too am wholly yours ! ” cried Godefroid, hold- 
ing out his hands to the worthy man. 

“ Now, do you understand that there are subjects of conver- 
sation absolutely prohibited here, never even to be alluded 
to?” Alain went on. “ Do you appreciate the obligation of 
reticence under which we all feel ourselves to a lady whom we 
reverence as a saint ? Do you understand the charm exerted 
by a woman made sacred by her misfortunes, having learned 
so many things, knowing the innermost secret of every form 
of suffering — a woman who has derived a lesson from every 
grief, whose every virtue has the twofold sanction of the 
hardest tests and of constant practice, whose soul is spotless 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


121 


and above reproach ; who has known motherhood only through 
its sorrows, and conjugal affection only through its bitterness ; 
on whom life never smiled but for a few months — for whom 
heaven no doubt keeps a palm in store as the reward of resig- 
nation and gentleness amid such sorrows ? Is she not superior 
to Job in that she has never murmured ? 

“ So you need never again be surprised to find her speech 
so impressive, her old age so fresh, her spirit so full of com- 
munion, her looks so persuasive; she has had powers extra- 
ordinary bestowed on her as a confidante of the sorrowing, for 
she has known every sorrow. In her presence smaller griefs 
are mute.” 

“ She is the living embodiment of charity,” cried Godefroid 
with enthusiasm. “May I become one of you?” 

“ You must endure the tests, and, above all else, Believe ! ” 
said the old man with gentle excitement. “ So long as you 
have not hold on faith, so long as you have not assimilated in 
your heart and brain the divine meaning of Saint Paul’s 
epistle on Charity, you can take no part in our work.” 

Paris, 1843-1845. 



SECOND EPISODE. 


INITIATED. 

What is nobly good is contagious, as evil is. And by the 
time Madame de la Chanterie’s boarder had dwelt for some 
months in this silent old house, after the story told him by 
Monsieur Alain, which filled him with the deepest respect for 
the half-monastic life he saw around him, he became conscious 
of the ease of mind that comes of a regular life, of quiet 
habits and harmonious tempers in those with whom we live. 
In four months Godefroid, never hearing an angry tone or the 
least dispute, owned to himself that since he had come to 
years of discretion he did not remember ever being so com- 
pletely at peace — for he could not say happy. He looked on 
the world from afar, and judged it sanely. At last the desire 
he had cherished these three months past to take his part in 
the deeds of this mysterious association had become a passion; 
and without being a very profound philosopher, the reader 
may imagine what strength such a passion may assume in 
seclusion. 

So one day — a day marked as solemn by the ascendency of 
the Spirit — Godefroid, after sounding his heart and measuring 
his powers, went up to his good friend Alain — whom Madame 
de la Chanterie always called her lamb — for of all the dwellers 
under that roof he had always seemed to Godefroid the most 
accessible and the least formidable. 1 To him, then, he would 
apply, to obtain from the worthy man some information as to 
the sort of priesthood which these Brethren in God exercised 
in Paris. Many allusions to a period of probation suggested 
to him that he would be put to initiatory tests of some kind. 
His curiosity had not been fully satisfied by what the vener- 
able old man had told him of the reasons why he had joined 
( 122 ) 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 123 

Madame de la Chanterie’s association ; he wanted to know 
more about this. 

At half-past ten o’clock that evening Godefroid found him- 
self for the third time in Monsieur Alain’s rooms, just as the 
old man was preparing to read his chapter of The Imitation. 
This time the mild old man could not help smiling, and he 
said to the young man, before allowing him to speak : 

“ Why do you apply to me, my dear boy, instead of address- 
ing yourself to madame ? I am the most ignorant, the least 
spiritual, the most imperfect member of the household. For 
the last three days madame and my friends have seen into 
your heart,” he added, with a little knowing air. 

“And what have they seen?” asked Godefroid. 

“ Oh,” said the good man, with perfect simplicity, “they 
have seen a guileless desire to belong to our community. But 
the feeling is not yet a very ardent vocation. Nay,” he re- 
plied to an impulsive gesture of Godefroid’s, “ you have more 
curiosity than fervor. In fact, you have not so completely 
freed yourself from your old ideas but that you imagine some- 
thing adventurous, something romantic, as the phrase goes, in 
the incidents of our life ” 

Godefroid could not help turning red. 

“ You fancy that there is some resemblance between our 
occupations and those of the Khalifs in the ‘ Arabian Nights,* 
and you anticipate a kind of satisfaction in playing the part 
of the good genii in the idyllic beneficences of which you 
dream ! Ah, ha ! my son, your smile of confusion shows 
me that we were not mistaken. How could you expect to 
conceal your thoughts from us, who make it our business to 
detect the hidden impulses of the soul, the cunning of 
poverty, the calculations of the needy ; who are honest spies, 
the police of a merciful Providence, old judges whose code of 
law knows only absolution, and physicians of every malady 
whose only prescription is a wise use of money ? Still, my 
dear boy, we do not quarrel with the motives that bring us a 


124 


THE SEA MT SIDE OF HISTORY 


neophyte if only he stays with us and becomes a brother of our 
Order. We shall judge you by your works. There are two 
kinds of curiosity — one for good and one for evil. At this 
moment your curiosity is for good. If you are to become a 
laborer in our vineyard, the juice of the grapes will give you 
perpetual thirst for the divine fruit. The initiation looks easy, 
but is difficult, as in every natural science. In well-doing, as 
in poetry, nothing can be easier than to clutch at its semblance ; 
but here, as on Parnassus, we are satisfied with nothing short 
of perfection. To become one of us, you must attain to 
great knowledge of life — and of such life. Good God ! 
Of that Paris life which defies the scrutiny of the chief of the 
police and his men. It is our task to unmask the permanent 
conspiracy of evil, and detect it under forms so endlessly 
changing that they might be thought infinite. In Paris, 
Charity must be as omniscient as Sin, just as the police agent 
must be as cunning as the thief. We have to be at once frank 
and suspicious; our judgment must be as certain and as swift 
as our eye. 

“As you see, dear boy, we are all old and worn out; but 
then we are so well satisfied with the results we have achieved 
that we wish not to die without leaving successors, and we 
hold you all the more dear because you may, if you will, be 
our first disciple. For us there is no risk, we owe you to 
God ! Yours is a sweet nature turned sour, and since you 
came to live here the evil leaven is weaker. Madame’s heav- 
enly nature has had its effect on you. 

“We held council yesterday; and inasmuch as you have 
given me your confidence, my good brothers decided on 
making me your instructor and guide. Are you satisfied with 
this arrangement ?” 

“ Oh, my kind Monsieur Alain, your eloquence has aroused, 
awakened ” 

“ It is not I that speak well, my dear boy, it is that great 
deeds are eloquent. We are always sure of soaring high if 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


125 


we obey God and imitate Jesus Christ so far as lies in man 
aided by faith.” 

“This moment has decided my fate; I feel the ardor of 
the neophyte ! ” cried Godefroid. “ I, too, would fain spend 
my life in well-doing ” 

“ That is the secret of dwelling in God,” replied the good 
man. “ Have you meditated on our motto : Transire benefaci- 
endo. Transire means to pass beyond this life, leaving a long 
train of good actions behind you.” 

“ I have understood it so and I have written up the motto 
of the Order in front of my bed.” 

“That is well. And that action, so trivial in itself, is of 
great value in my eyes. Well, my son, I have your first task 
ready for you, I will see you with your foot in the stirrup. 
We must part. Yes, for I have to leave our retreat and take 
my place in the heart of a volcano. I am going as foreman 
in a large factory where all the workmen are infected with 
communistic doctrines — and dream of social destruction, of 
murdering the masters, never seeing that this would be to 
murder industry, manufacture, and commerce. 

“ I shall remain there — who knows — a year, perhaps, as 
cashier, keeping the books, and making my way into a hun- 
dred or more humble homes, among men who were misled by 
poverty, no doubt, before they were deluded by bad books. 
However, we shall see each other here every Sunday and holi- 
day ; as I shall live in the same quarter of the town we may 
meet at the church of Saint-Jacques du Haut-Pas ; I shall 
attend mass there every morning at half-past seven. If you 
should happen to meet me elsewhere, you must never recog- 
nize me, unless I rub my hands with an air of satisfaction. 
That is one of our signals. Like the deaf-mutes, we have a 
language by signs, of which the necessity will soon be more 
than abundantly evident to you.” 

Godefroid’s expression was intelligible to Monsieur Alain, 
for he smiled and went on — 


126 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


“Now for your business. We do not practice either benef- 
icence or philanthropy as they are known to you, under a 
variety of branches which are preyed upon by swindlers, just 
like any other form of trade. We exercise charity as it is 
defined by our great and sublime master Saint Paul ; for it is 
our belief, my son, that such charity alone can heal the woes 
of Paris. Thus, in our eyes, sorrow, poverty, suffering, trouble, 
evil — from whatever cause they may proceed and in whatever 
class of society we find them — have equal claims upon us. 
Whatever their creed or their opinions, the unfortunate are, 
first and foremost, unfortunate ; we do not try to persuade 
them to look to our holy mother the church until we have 
rescued them from despair and starvation. And even then 
we try to convert them by example and kindness, for thus we 
believe that we have the help of God. All coercion is wrong. 

“Of all the wretchedness in Paris, the most difficult to dis- 
cover and the bitterest to endure is that of the respectable 
middle-class, the better class of citizens, when they come to 
poverty, for they make it a point of honor to conceal it. 
Such disasters as these, my dear Godefroid, are the object of 
our particular care. Such persons, when we help them, show 
intelligence and good feeling ; they return us with interest 
what we may lend to them ; and in the course of time their re- 
payments cover the losses we meet with through the disabled, 
or by swindlers, or those whom misfortune has stultified. 
Sometimes we get useful information from those we have 
helped ; but the work has grown to such vast dimensions, and 
its details are so numerous, that it is beyond our powers. Now, 
for the last seven or eight months, we have a physician in our 
employment in each district of the city of Paris. Each of us 
has four arrondissements (or wards) under his eye ; and we 
are prepared to pay to each three thousand francs a year to 
take charge of our poor. He is required to give up his time 
and care to them by preference, but we do not prevent his 
taking other patients. Would you believe that we have not 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


127 


in eight months been able to find twelve such men, twelve 
good men, in spite of the pecuniary aid offered by our friends 
and acquaintance? You see, we needed men of absolute 
secrecy, of pure life, of recognized abilities, and with a love 
of doing good. Well, in Paris there are perhaps ten thousand 
men fit for the work, and yet in a year’s search the twelve 
elect have not been found.” 

“Our Lord found it hard to collect His apostles,” said 
Godefroid, “ and there were a traitor and a disbeliever among 
them after all ! ” 

“ At last, within the past fifteen days, each arrondissement 
has been provided with a Visitor,” said the old man, smiling 
— “ for so we call our physicians — and, indeed, within those 
fifteen days there has been a vast increase of business. How- 
ever, we have worked all the harder. I tell you this secret of 
our infant fraternity because you must make acquaintance with 
the physician of your district, all the more so because we de- 
pend on him for information. The gentleman’s name is 
Berton— Doctor Berton — and he lives in the Rue de l’Enfer. 

“ Now for the facts. Doctor Berton is attending a lady 
whose disease seems in some way to defy science. That in- 
deed does not concern us, but the Faculty only ; our business 
is to find out the poverty of the sick woman’s family, which 
the doctor believes to be frightful, and concealed with a de- 
termination and pride that baffle all our inquiries. Hitherto, 
my dear boy, this would have been my task ; but now the 
work to which I am devoting myself makes an assistant neces- 
sary in my four districts, and you must be that assistant. The 
family lives in the Rue Notre-Dame des Champs, in a house 
looking out over the Boulevard du Mont-Parnasse. You will 
easily find a room to let there, and while lodging there for a 
time you must try to discover the truth. Be sordid as regards 
your own expenses, but do not trouble your head about the 
money you give. I will send you such sums as we consider 
necessary, taking all the circumstances of the case into con- 


128 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


sideration. But study the moral character of these unfortu- 
nate people. A good heart and noble feelings are the security 
for our loans. Stingy to ourselves and generous to suffering, 
we must still be careful and never rash, for we dip into the 
treasury of the poor. Go to-morrow, and remember how 
much power lies in your hands. The Brethren will be on 
your side.” 

“Ah!” cried Godefroid, “you have given me so much 
pleasure in trusting me to do good and be worthy of some 
day being one of you, that I shall not sleep for joy.” 

“Stay, my boy, one last piece of advice. The prohibition 
to recognize me unless I make the sign concerns the other 
gentlemen and madame, and even the servants of the house. 
Absolute incognito is indispensable to ail our undertakings, 
and we are so constantly obliged to preserve it that we have 
made it a law without exceptions. We must be unknown, lost 
in Paris. 

“ Remember, too, my dear Godefroid, the very spirit of 
our Order, which requires us never to appear as benefactors, 
but to play the obscure part of intermediaries. We always 
represent ourselves as the agents of some saintly and benefi- 
cent personage — are we not toiling for God? — so that no 
gratitude may be considered due to ourselves, and that we 
may not be supposed to be rich. True, sincere humility, not 
the false humility of those who keep in the shade that others 
may throw a light on them, must inspire and govern all your 
thoughts. You may rejoice when you succeed ; but so long 
as you feel the least impulse of vanity, you will be unworthy 
to join the Brotherhood. We have known two perfect men. 
One, who was one of our founders, Judge Popinot \ the other, 
who was known by his works, was a country doctor who has 
left his name written in a remote parish. He, my dear Gode- 
froid, was one of the greatest men of our day ; he raised a 
whole district from a savage state to one of prosperity, from 
irreligion to the Catholic faith, from barbarism to civilization. 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


129 


The names of those two men are graven on our hearts, and 
we regard them as our examples. We should be happy indeed 
if we might one day have in Paris such influence as that 
country doctor had in his own district. 

‘‘But here the plague-spot is immeasurable, and, so far, 
quite beyond our powers. May God long preserve madame, 
and send us many such helpers as you, and then perhaps we 
may found an institution that will lead men to bless His holy 
religion. 

“ Well, farewell. Your initiation now begins. 

“ Bless me ! I chatter like a professor, and was forgetting 
the most important matter. Here is the address of the family 
I spoke of,” he went on, handing a scrap of paper to Gode- 
froid. “And I have added the number of Monsieur Berton’s 
house in the Rue de l’Enfer. Now, go and pray God to help 
you.” 

Godefroid took the good old man’s hands and pressed them 
affectionately, bidding him good-night, and promising to 
forget none of his injunctions. 

“All you have said,” he added, “is stamped on my 
memory for life.” 

Alain smiled with no expression of doubt, and rose to go 
and kneel at his prie-Dieu. Godefroid went back to his own 
room, happy in being at last allowed to know the mysteries 
of this household, and to have an occupation which, in his 
present frame of mind, was really a pleasure. 

At breakfast next morning there was no Monsieur Alain, 
but Godefroid made no remark on his absence. Nor was he 
questioned as to the mission given him by the old man ; thus 
he received his first lesson in secrecy. After breakfast, how- 
ever, he took Madame de la Chanterie aside, and told her 
that he should be absent for a few days. 

“ Very well, my child,” replied Madame de la Chanterie. 
“And try to do your sponsor credit, for Monsieur Alain has 
answered for you to his brethren.” 

9 


130 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


Godefroid took leave of the other three men, who embraced 
him affectionately, seeming thus to give him their blessing on 
his outset in his laborious career. 

Association — one of the greatest social forces which was 
the making of Europe in the Middle Ages — is based on feel- 
ings which have ceased since 1792, to exist in France, where 
the individul is now supreme over the State. Association 
requires, in the first place, a kind of devotedness which is not 
understood in this country ; a simplicity of faith which is 
contrary to the national spirit ; and, finally, a discipline against 
which everything rebels, and which nothing but the Catholic 
faith can exact. As soon as an association is formed in 
France, each member of it, on returning home from a meeting 
where the finest sentiments have been expressed, makes a bed 
for himself of the collective devotion of this combination of 
forces, and tries to milk for his own benefit the cow belonging 
to all, till the poor thing, inadequate to meet so many indi- 
vidual demands, dies of attenuation. 

None can tell how many generous emotions have been 
nipped, how many fervid germs have perished, how much 
resource has been crushed and lost to the country by the 
shameful frauds of the French secret societies, of the patriotic 
fund for the Champ d’Asile (emigration to America), and 
other political swindles, which ought to have produced great 
and noble dramas, but turned out mere farces of the lower 
police courts. 

It was the same with industrial as with political associations. 
Self-interest took the place of public spirit. The corporations 
and Hanseatic guilds of the Middle Ages, to which we shall 
some day return, are as yet out of the question ; the only 
societies that still exist are religious institutions, and at this 
moment they are being very roughly attacked, for the natural 
tendency of the sick is to rebel against the remedies and often 
to rend the physician. France knows not what self-denial 
means. Hence no association can hold together but by the 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 131 

aid of religious sentiment, the only power that can quell 
the rebellion of the intellect, the calculations of ambition, 
and greed of every kind. Those who are in search of worlds 
fail to understand that Association has worlds in its gift. 

Godefroid, as he made his way through the streets, felt 
himself a different man. Any one who could have read his 
mind would have wondered at the curious phenomenon of the 
communication of the spirit of union. He was no longer 
one man, but a being multiplied tenfold, feeling himself the 
representative of five persons whose united powers were at the 
back of all he did, and who walked with him on his way. 
With this strength in his heart, he was conscious of a fullness 
of life, a lofty power that uplifted him. It was, as he afterward 
owned, one of the happiest moments of his life, for he rejoiced 
in a new sense — that of an omnipotence more absolute than 
that of despots. Moral force, like thought, knows no limits. 

“ This is living for others,” said he to himself, “ acting with 
others as if we were but one man, and acting alone as if we 
were all together ! This is having Charity for a leader, the 
fairest and most living of all the ideals that have been created 
of the Catholic virtues. Yes, this is living ! Come, I must 
subdue this childish exaltation which Father Alain would 
laugh to scorn. Still, is it not strange that it is by dint of 
trying to annul my Self that I have found the power so long 
wished for? The world of misfortune is to be my inher- 
itance.” 

He crossed the precincts of Notre-Dame to the Avenue de 
TObservatoire in such high spirits that he did not heed the 
length of the walk. 

Having reached the Rue Notre-Dame des Champs, at the 
end of the Rue de l’Ouest, he was surprised to find such pools 
of mud in so handsome a quarter of the town, for neither of 
those streets was as yet paved. The foot-passenger had to 
walk on planks laid close to the walls of the marshy gardens, 


132 THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 

or creep by the houses on narrow side-paths, which were soon 
swamped by the stagnant waters that turned them into 
gutters. 

After much seeking, he discovered the house described 
to him and got to it, not without some difficulty. It was 
evidently an old manufactory which had been abandoned. 
The building was narrow, and the front was a long wall pierced 
with windows quite devoid of any ornament ; but there were 
none of these square openings on the first floor — only a 
wretched back-door. 

Godefroid supposed that the owner had contrived a number 
of rooms in this structure to his own profit, for over the door 
there was a board scrawled by hand to this effect: Several 
Rooms to Let. Godefroid rang, but no one came ; and, as he 
stood waiting, a passer-by pointed out to him that there was 
another entrance to the house from the boulevard, where he 
would find somebody to speak to. 

Godefroid acted on the information, and from the boulevard 
he saw the front of the house screened by the trees of a small 
garden-plot. This garden, very ill-kept, sloped to the house, 
for there is such a difference of level between the boulevard 
and the Rue Notre-Dame des Champs as to make the garden a 
sort of ditch. Godefroid went down the path, and at the 
bottom of it saw an old woman whose dilapidated garb was in 
perfect harmony with the dwelling. 

“ Was it you who rang in the Rue Notre-Dame?” she 
asked. 

“ Yes, madame. Is it your business to show the rooms? ” 

On a reply in the affirmative from this portress, whose age 
it was difficult to determine, Godefroid inquired whether the 
house was tenanted by quiet folk; his occupations required 
peace and silence ; he was a bachelor, and wished to arrange 
with the doorkeeper to cook and clean for him. 

On this hint the woman became gracious, and said — 

i( Monsieur could not have done better than to hit on this 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


133 


house ; for, excepting the days when there are doings at the 
Chaumi£re, the boulevard is as deserted as the Pontine 
Marshes ” 

“Do you know the Pontine Marshes?” asked Godefroid. 

“No, sir; but there is an old gentleman upstairs whose 
daughter is always in a dying state, and he says so. I only 
repeat it. That poor old man will be truly glad to think that 
you want peace and quiet, for a lodger who stormed around 
would be the death of his daughter. And we have two writers 
of some kind on the third floor, but they come in for the day 
at midnight, and then for night they go out at eight in the 
morning. Authors, they say they are, but I do not know 
where or when they work.” 

As she spoke, the portress led Godefroid up one of those 
horrible stairs built of wood and brick, in such an unholy 
alliance that it is impossible to say whether the wood is part- 
ing from the bricks or the bricks are disgusted at being set in 
the wood ; while both materials seem to fortify their disunion 
by masses of dust in summer and of mud in winter. The 
walls, of cracked plaster, bore more inscriptions than the 
Academy of Belles-lettres ever invented. 

The woman stopped on the second floor. 

“Now, here, sir, are two very good rooms, opening into 
each other, and on to Monsieur Bernard’s landing. He is 
the old gentleman I mentioned — and quite the gentleman. 
He has the ribbon of the Legion of Honor, but he has had 
great troubles, it would seem, for he never wears it. When 
first they came they had a servant to wait on them, a man 
from the country, and they sent him away close on three years 
ago. The lady’s young gentleman — her son — does everything 
now; he manages it all ” 

Godefroid looked shocked. 

“Oh ! ” said the woman, “ don’t be uneasy, they will say 
nothing to you ; they never speak to anybody. The gentle- 
man has been here ever since the Revolution of July ; he came 


134 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


in 1831. They are some high provincial family, I believe, 
ruined by the change of government ; and proud ! and as 
mute as fishes. For four years, sir, they have never let me 
do the least thing for them, for fear of having to pay. A 
five-franc piece on New Year’s Day, that’s every sou I get out 
of them. Give me your authors ! I get ten francs a month, 
only to tell everybody who comes to ask for them that they 
left at the end of last quarter.” 

All this babble led Godefroid to hope for an ally in this 
woman, who explained to him, as she praised the airiness of 
the two rooms and adjoining dressing-closets, that she was 
not the portress, but the landlord’s deputy and janitress, 
managing everything for him to a great extent. 

“And you may trust me, monsieur, I promise you ! Mad- 
ame Vauthier — that’s me — would rather have nothing at all 
than take a sou of anybody else’s.” 

Madame Vauthier soon came to terms with Godefroid, who 
wished to take the rooms by the month and ready furnished. 
These wretched lodgings, rented by students or authors 
“down on their luck,” were let furnished or unfurnished, as 
might be required. The spacious lofts over the whole house 
were full of furniture. But Monsieur Bernard himself had 
furnished the rooms he occupied. 

By getting Madame Vauthier to talk, Godefroid discovered 
that her ambition was to set up a middle-class boarding-house ; 
but in the course of five years she had failed to meet with a 
single boarder among her lodgers. She inhabited the first 
floor, on the side toward the boulevard ; thus she was herself 
the doorkeeper, with the help of a big dog, a sturdy girl, and 
a boy who cleaned the boots, ran errands, and did the rooms, 
two creatures as poor as herself, in harmony with the squalor 
of the house and its inhabitants, and the desolate, neglected 
appearance of the garden in front. 

They were both foundlings, to whom the widow Vauthier 
gave no wages but their food — and such food ! The boy, of 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HIS TOR y. 


135 


whom Godefroid caught a glimpse, wore a ragged blouse, list 
slippers instead of shoes, and sabots (wooden shoes) to go out 
in. With a shock of hair, as tousled as a sparrow taking a 
bath, and blackened hands, as soon as he had done the work 
of the house, he went off to measure wood-logs in a woodyard 
hard by, and when his day was over — at half-past four for 
wood-sawyers — he returned to his occupations. He fetched 
water for the household from the fountain by the Observatory 
and the widow supplied it to the lodgers, as well as the faggots 
which he chopped and tied. 

Nepomucene — this was the name of the widow Vauthier’s 
slave — handed over his earnings to his mistress. In summer- 
time the unhappy waif served as waiter in the wine saloons by 
the barriere on Sundays and Mondays. Then the woman lent 
him decent clothes to wear. 

As for the girl, she cooked under the widow’s orders, and 
helped her in her trade work at other times, for the woman 
plied a trade ; she made list slippers for hawkers to sell. 

All these details were known to Godefroid within an hour, 
for Madame Vauthier took him all over the house, showing 
him how it had been altered. A silkworm establishment had 
been carried on there till 1828, not so much for the produc- 
tion of silk as for that of the eggs — the seed, as it is called. 
Eleven acres of mulberry-trees at Mont-Rouge and three acres 
in the Rue de l’Ouest, since built over, had supplied food for 
this nursery for silkworms’ eggs. 

Madame Vauthier was telling Godefroid that Monsieur 
Barbet, who had lent the capital to an Italian named Fresconi 
to carry on this business, had been obliged to sell those three 
acres to recover the money secured by a mortgage on the land 
and buildings, and was pointing out the plot of ground, lying 
on the other side of the Rue Notre-Dame des Champs, when 
a tall and meagre old man, with perfectly white hair, came 
in sight at the end of the street where it crosses the Rue de 
l’Ouest. 


136 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY . 


“In the very nick of time!” cried Madame Vauthier. 
“Look, that is your neighbor, Monsieur Bernard. Monsieur 
Bernard,” cried she, as soon as the old man was within hear- 
ing, “you will not be alone now; this gentleman here has just 
taken the rooms opposite yours ” 

Monsieur Bernard looked up at Godefroid with an appre- 
hensive eye that was easy to read ; it was as though he had 
said, “ Then the misfortune I have so long feared has come 
upon me!” 

“ What, monsieur,” said he, “you propose to reside here?” 

“Yes, monsieur,” said Godefroid civilly. “This is no 
home for those who are lucky in the world, and it is the 
cheapest lodging I have seen in this part of the town. Madame 
Vauthier does not expect to harbor millionaires. Good-day, 
then, Madame Vauthier; arrange things so that I may come in 
at six o’clock this evening. I shall return punctually.” 

And Godefroid went off toward the Rue de l’Ouest, walk- 
ing slowly, for the anxiety he had read in the old man’s face 
led him to suppose that he wanted to dispute the matter with 
him. And, in fact, after some little hesitation, Monsieur 
Bernard turned on his heel and walked quickly enough to 
come up with Godefroid. 

“ That old wretch ! he wants to hinder him from coming 
back,” said Madame Vauthier to herself. “Twice already 
he has played me that trick. Patience ! His rent is due in 
five days, and if he does not pay it down on the nail, out he 
goes ! Monsieur Barbet is a tiger of a sort that does not need 
much lashing, and — I should like to know \vhat he is saying 
to him — Felicite ! Felicite ! you lazy hussy, will you make 
haste?” cried the widow in a formidable croak, for she had 
assumed an affable piping tone in speaking to Godefroid. 

The girl, a sturdy, red-haired lass, came running out. 

“Just keep a sharp eye on everything for a few seconds, do 
you hear? I shall be back in five minutes.” 

And the widow Vauthier, formerly cook to the bookseller’s 






“I BEG YOUR PARDON A THOUSAND TIMES, MONSIEUR 







THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY . 


137 


store kept by Barbet, one of the hardest money-lenders on 
short terms in the neighborhood, stole out at the heels of her 
two lodgers, so as to watch them from a distance and rejoin 
Godefroid as. soon as he and Monsieur Bernard should part 
company. 

Monsieur Bernard was walking slowly, like a man in two 
minds, or a debtor seeking for excuses to give to a creditor 
who has left him to take proceedings. 

Godefroid, in front of this unknown neighbor, turned round 
to look at him under pretense of looking about. And it was 
not till they had reached the broad walk in the Luxembourg 
Gardens that Monsieur Bernard came up with Godefroid and 
addressed him. 

“I beg your pardon a thousand times, monsieur, ” said he, 
bowing to Godefroid, who returned the bow, “ for stopping 
you, when I have not the honor of knowing you ; but is it 
your firm intention to live in the horrible house where I am 
lodging?” 

“ Indeed, monsieur ” 

“I know,” said the old ‘man, interrupting Godefroid with 
a commanding air, ‘‘that you have a right to ask me what 
concern of mine it is to meddle in your affairs, to question 
you. Listen, monsieur; you are young, and I am very old; 
I am older than my years, and they are sixty-six — I might be 
taken for eighty ! Age and misfortune justify many things, 
since the law exempts septuagenarians from various public 
duties; still, I do not dwell on the privileges bestowed by 
white hairs; it is you for whom I am concerned. Do you 
know that the part of the town in which you think of living 
is a desert by eight in the evening, and full of dangers, of 
which being robbed is the least ? Have you noticed the wide 
plots where there are no houses, the waste ground and market 
gardens? You will, perhaps, retort that I live there; but I, 
monsieur, am never out of doors after six in the evening. Or 


138 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


you will say that two young men are lodgers on the third 
floor, above the rooms you propose to take ; but, monsieur, 
those two unhappy writers are the victims of writs out against 
them ; they are pursued by their creditors ; they are in hiding, 
and go out all day to come in at midnight; and as they 
always keep together and carry arms, they have no fear of 
being robbed. I myself obtained permission from the chief 
of the police for them each to carry a weapon.” 

“Indeed, monsieur,” said Godefroid, “I have no fear of 
robbers, for the same reasons as leave these gentlemen invul- 
nerable, and so great a contempt for life, that if I should be 
murdered by mistake, I should bless the assassin.” 

“And yet you do not look so very wretched,” said the old 
man, who was studying Godefroid. 

“ I have barely enough to live on, to give me bread, and I 
chose that part of the town for the sake of the quiet that reigns 
there. But may I ask, monsieur, what object you can have in 
keeping me out of the house? ” 

The old man hesitated ; he saw Madame Vauthier in pur- 
suit. Godefroid, who was examining him attentively, was 
surprised at the excessive emaciation to which grief, and per- 
haps hunger, or perhaps hard work, had reduced him ; there 
were traces of all these causes of weakness on the face where 
the withered skin looked dried on to the bones, as if it had 
been exposed to the African sun. The forehead, which was 
high and threatening, rose in a dome above a pair of steel-blue 
eyes, cold, hard, shrewd, and piercing as those of a savage, 
and set in deep, dark, and very wrinkled circles, like a bruise 
round each. A large, long, thin nose, and the upward curve 
of the chin, gave the old man a marked likeness to the familiar 
features of Don Quixote ; but this was a sinister Don Quixote, 
a man of no delusions, a terrible Don Quixote. 

The old man, in spite of his look of severity, betrayed 
nevertheless the timidity and weakness that poverty gives to 
the unfortunate. And these two feelings seemed to have 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


139 


graven lives of ruin on a face so strongly framed that the 
destroying pickaxe of misery had rough-hewn it. The mouth 
was expressive and grave. Don Quixote was crossed with the 
President de Montesquieu. 

The man’s dress was of black cloth throughout, but utterly 
threadbare ; the coat, old-fashioned in cut, and the trousers 
showed many badly-executed patches. The buttons had been 
recently renewed. The coat was fastened up to the chin, show- 
ing no linen, and a rusty-black stock covered the absence of 
a collar. These black clothes, worn for many years, reeked 
of penury. But the mysterious old man’s air of dignity, his 
gait, the mind that dwelt behind that brow and lighted up 
those eyes, seemed irreconcilable with poverty. An observer 
would have found it hard to class this Parisian. 

Monsieur Bernard was so absent-minded that he might have 
been taken for a professor of the college-quarter, a learned 
man lost in jealous and overbearing meditation ; and Gode- 
froid was filled with excessive interest and a degree of curiosity 
to which his beneficent mission added a spur. 

“ Monsieur,” said the old man presently, “ if I were assured 
that all you seek is silence and privacy, I would say: ‘Come 
and live near me.’ Take the rooms,” he went on in a louder 
voice, so that the widow might hear him, as she passed them, 
listening to what they were saying. “lama father, monsieur, 
I have no one belonging to me in the world but my daughter 
and her son to help me to endure the miseries of life; but my 
daughter needs silence and perfect quiet. Every one who has 
hitherto come to take the rooms you wish to lodge in has 
yielded to the reasoning and the entreaties of a heartbroken 
father ; they did not care in which street they settled of so 
desolate a part of the town, where cheap lodgings are plenty 
and boarding-houses at very low rates. But you, I see, are 
very much bent on it, and I can only beg you, monsieur, not 
to deceive me; for if you should, I can but leave and settle 
beyond the barrier. And, in the first place, a removal might 


140 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


cost my daughter her life,” he said in a broken voice, “and 
then, who knows whether the doctors who come to attend her 
— for the love of God — would come outside the gates? ” 

If the man could have shed tears, they would have run down 
his cheeks as he spoke these last words ; but there were tears 
in his voice, to use a phrase that has become commonplace, 
and he covered his brow with a hand that was mere bone and 
sinew. 

“ What, then, is the matter with madame, your daughter? ” 
asked Godefroid in a voice of ingratiating sympathy. 

“A terrible disease to which the doctors give a variety of 
names — or rather, which has no name. All my fortune went, 
was ’ ’ 

But he checked himself, and said, with one of those move- 
ments peculiar to the unfortunate — 

“The little money I had — for in 1830, dismissed from a 
high position, I found myself without an income — in short, 
everything I had was soon eaten up by my daughter, who had 
already ruined her mother and her husband’s family. At the 
present time the pension I draw hardly suffices to pay for 
necessaries in the state in which my poor saintly daughter now 
is. She has exhausted all my power to weep. 

“I have endured every torment, monsieur; I must be of 
granite still to live — or rather, God preserves the father that 
his child may still have a nurse or a providence, for her 
mother died of exhaustion. 

“Ay, young man, you have come at a moment when this 
old tree that has never bent is feeling the axe of suffering, 
sharpened by poverty, cutting at its heart. And I, who have 
never complained to anybody, will tell you about this long ill- 
ness to keep you from coming to the house — or, if you insist, 
to show you how necessary it is that our quiet should not be 
disturbed. 

“At this moment, monsieur, day and night, my daughter 
barks like a dog.” 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


141 


“ She is mad, then ? ” said Godefroid. 

‘‘She is in her right mind, and a perfect saint,” replied 
Monsieur Bernard. “ You will think that I am mad when I 
have told you all. My only daughter is the child of a mother 
who enjoyed excellent health. I never in my life loved but 
one woman — she was my wife. I chose her myself, and mar- 
ried for love the daughter of one of the bravest colonels in the 
Imperial Guard, a Pole formerly on the Emperor’s staff, the 
gallant General Tarlovski. In the place I held strict morality 
was indispensable; but my heart is not adapted to accommo- 
date many fancies — I loved my wife faithfully, and she de- 
served it. And I am as constant as a father as I was as a 
husband ; I can say no more. 

“My daughter never left her mother’s care; no girl ever 
led a chaster or more Christian life than my dear child. She 
was more than pretty — lovely; and her husband, a young man 
of whose character I was certain, for he was the son of an old 
friend, a president of the supreme court, I am sure was in no 
way contributory to his wife’s malady.” 

Monsieur Bernard and Godefroid involuntarily stood still a 
moment looking at each other. 

“Marriage, as you know, often changes a woman’s consti- 
tution,” the old man went on. “My daughter’s first child 
was safely brought into the world, a son — my grandson, who 
lives with us, and who is the only descendant of either of the 
united families. The second time my daughter was expecting 
an infant she had such singular symptoms that the physicians, 
all puzzled, could only ascribe them to the singular conditions 
which sometimes occur in such cases, and which are recorded 
in the memoirs of medical science. The infant was born 
dead, literally strangled by internal convulsions. Thus began 
the illness — temporary conditions had nothing to do with it. 
Perhaps you are a medical student ? ” Godefroid replied with 
a nod, which might be either negative or affirmative. 

“After this disastrous child-bearing,” Monsieur Bernard 


142 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


went on — “ a scene that made so terrible an impression on my 
son-in-law that it laid the foundations of the decline of which 
he died — my daughter, at the end of two or three months, 
complained of general debility, more particularly affecting her 
feet, which felt, as she described it, as if they were made of 
cotton. This weakness became paralysis, but what a strange 
form of paralysis ! You may bend my daughter’s feet under 
her, twist them round, and she feels nothing. The limbs are 
there, but they seem to have no blood, no flesh, no bones. 
This condition, which is unlike any recognized disease, has 
attacked her arms and hands ; it is supposed to be connected 
with her spine. Doctors and suggested remedies have only 
made her worse ; my poor child cannot move without dislo- 
cating her hips, shoulders, or wrists. We have had for a long 
time an excellent surgeon, almost in the house, who makes it 
his care, with the help of a doctor — or doctors, for several 
have seen her out of curiosity — to replace the joints — would 
you believe me, monsieur? — as often as three or four times a 
day. 

“Ah ! I was forgetting to tell you — for this illness has so 
many forms — that during the early weak stage, before paralysis 
supervened, my daughter was liable to the most extraordinary 
attacks of catalepsy. You know what catalepsy is. She would 
lie with her eyes open and staring, sometimes in the attitude 
in which the fit seized her. She has had the most incredible 
forms of this affection, even attacks of tetanus. 

“ This phase of the disease suggested to me the application 
of mesmerism as a cure when I saw her so strangely paralyzed. 
Then, monsieur, my daughter became miraculously clairvoy- 
ante, her mind was subject to every marvel of somnambulism, 
as her body is to every form of disease.” 

Godefroid was indeed wondering whether the old man were 
quite sane. 

“ For my part,” he went on, heedless of the expression of 
Godefroid’s eyes, “I, brought up on Voltaire, Diderot, and 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


143 


Helvetius, am a son of the eighteenth century, of the Revolu- 
tion ; and I laughed to scorn all the records handed down 
from antiquity and middle ages of persons possessed — yes, 
and yet possession is the only explanation of the state my 
child is in. Even in her mesmeric sleep she has never been 
able to reveal the cause of her sufferings ; she could not see 
it ; and the methods of treatment suggested by her under 
those conditions, though carefully followed, have had no good 
result. For instance, she said she must be wrapped in a 
freshly killed pig ; then she was to have points of highly mag- 
netized red-hot iron applied to her legs; to have melted sealing- 
wax on her spine. And what a wreck she became ; her teeth 
fell out ; she became deaf, and then dumb ; and suddenly, 
after six months of perfect deafness and silence, she recovered 
hearing and speech. She occasionally recovers the use of her 
hands as unexpectedly as she loses it, but for seven years she 
has never known the use of her feet. 

“She has sometimes had well-defined and characteristic 
attacks of hydrophobia. Not only may the sight or sound of 
water, of a glass or a cup, rouse her to frenzy, but she barks 
like a dog, a melancholy bark, or howls, as dogs do at the 
sound of an organ. 

“She has several times seemed to be dying, and has re- 
ceived the last sacraments, and then come back to life again 
to suffer with full understanding and clearness of mind, for 
her faculties of heart and brain remain unimpaired. Though 
she is alive, she has caused the death of her husband and her 
mother, who could not stand such repeated trials. Alas ! 
Nor is this all. Every function of nature is perverted ; only 
a medical man could give you a complete account of the 
strange condition of every organ. 

“ In this state did I bring her to Paris from the country in 
1829; for the famous physicians to whom I described the 
case — Desplein, Bianchon, and Haudry — believed I was trying 
to impose upon them. At that time magnetism was stoutly 


144 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


denied by the schools. Without throwing any doubt on the 
provincial doctors’ good faith or mine, they thought there was 
some inaccuracy, or, if you like, some exaggeration, such as 
is common enough in families or in the sufferers themselves. 
But they have been obliged to change their views ; to these 
phenomena, indeed, it is due that nervous diseases have of 
late years been made the subject of investigation, for this 
strange case is now classed as nervous. The last consultation 
held by these gentlemen led them to give up all medicine ; 
they decided that nature must be studied, but left to itself ; 
and since then I have had but one doctor — the doctor who 
attends the poor of this district. In fact, all that can be 
done is done to alleviate her sufferings, since their causes 
remain unknown.” 

The old man paused, as if this terrible confession were too 
much for him. 

“ For five years now my daughter has lived through alterna- 
tions of amendment and relapse ; but no new symptoms have 
appeared. She suffers more or less from the various forms of 
nervous attack which I have briefly described to you ; but the 
paralysis of the legs and organic disturbances are constant. 
Our narrow means — increasingly narrow — compelled us to 
move from the rooms I took in 1829 in the Rue du Roule; 
and as my daughter cannot bear being moved, and I nearly 
lost her twice, first in coming to Paris, and then in moving 
here from the Beaujon side, I took the lodging in which we 
now are, foreseeing the disasters which ere long overtook us ; 
for, after thirty years’ service, I was kept waiting for my pen- 
sion till 1833. I have drawn it only for six months, and the 
new government has crowned its severities by granting me 
only the minimum.” 

Godefroid expressed such surprise as seemed to demand 
entire confidence, and so the old man understood it, for he 
went on at once, not without a reproachful glance toward 
heaven. 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


145 


'* I am one of the thousand victims to political reaction. 
I carefully hide a name that is obnoxious to revenge ; and if 
the lessons of experience ever avail from one generation to the 
next, remember, young man, never to lend yourself to the 
severity of any side in politics. Not that I repent of having 
done my duty, my conscience is at peace ; but the powers of 
to-day have ceased to have that sense of common responsibility 
which binds governments together, however dissimilar ; when 
zeal meets with a reward, it is the result of transient fear. 
The instrument, having served its purpose, is, sooner or later, 
completely forgotten. In me you see one of the stanchest 
supporters of the throne under the elder branch of the Bour- 
bons, as I was, too, of the Imperial rule, and I am a beggar ! 
As I am too proud to ask charity, no one will ever guess that 
I am suffering intolerable ills. 

“ Five days since, monsieur, the district medical officer 
who attends my daughter, or who watches the case, told me 
that he had no hope of curing a disease of which the symptoms 
vary every fortnight. His view is that neurotic patients are 
the despair of the faculty because the causes lie in a system 
that defies investigation. He advises me to call in a certain 
Jewish doctor, who is spoken of as a quack ; but at the same 
time he remarked that he was a foreigner, a Polish refugee, 
and that physicians are extremely jealous of certain extra- 
ordinary cures that have been much talked of ; some people 
regard him as very learned and skillful. 

“But he is exacting and suspicious; he selects his patients, 
and will not waste time; and then he is — a communist. His 
name is Halpersohn. My grandson has called on him twice, 
but in vain ; for he has not yet been to the house, and I 
understand why.” 

“Why?” asked Godefroid. 

“Oh, my grandson, who is sixteen, is worse clothed even 
than I am ; and, will you believe me, monsieur, I dare not 
show myself to this doctor ; my dress is too ill-suited 
10 


146 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


to what is expected in a man of my age, and of some dig- 
nity, too. If he should see the grandfather so destitute as 
I am when the grandson has shown himself in the same sorry 
plight, would he devote due care to my daughter? He would 
treat her as paupers are always treated. And you must 
remember, monsieur, that I love my daughter for the grief she 
has caused me, as of old I loved her for the care she lavished 
upon me. She has become a perfect angel. Alas ! She is 
now no more than a soul — a soul that beams on her son and 
on me ; her body is no more, for she has triumphed over pain. 

“ Imagine what a spectacle for a father ! My daughter’s 
world is her bedroom. She must have flowers which she 
loves ; she reads a great deal ; and when she has the use of 
her hands, she works like a fairy. She knows nothing of the 
misery in which we live. Our life is such a strange one, that 
we can admit no one to our rooms. Do you understand me, 
monsieur? Do you see that a neighbor is intolerable? I 
should have to ask so much of him that I should be under the 
greatest obligations — and I could never discharge them. In 
the first place, I have no time for anything: I am educating 
my grandson, and I work so hard, monsieur — so hard, that I 
never sleep for more than three or four hours at night.” 

“Monsieur,” said Godefroid, interrupting the old man, to 
whom he had listened attentively while watching him with 
grieved attention, “ I will be your neighbor, and I will help 
you ” 

The old gentleman drew himself up with pride, indeed, 
with impatience, for he did no^ believe in any good thing in 
man. 

“ I will help you,” repeated Godefroid, taking the old 
man’s hands and pressing them warmly, “ in such ways as I 
can. Listen to me. What do you intend to make of your 
grandson ? ” 

“ He is soon to begin studying the law; I mean him to be 
an advocate.” 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


147 


“ Then your grandson will cost you six hundred francs a 
year, and you ” 

The old man said nothing. 

“I have nothing,” said Godefroid after a pause, “but I 
have influence ; I will get at the Jewish doctor ; and if your 
daughter is curable, she shall be cured. We will find means 
of paying this Halpersohn.” 

“ Oh, if my daughter were cured, I would make the sacrifice 
that can be made but once; I would give up what I am saving 
for a rainy day.”* 

“You may keep that too.” 

“Ah ! what a thing it is to be young ! ” said the old man, 
shaking his head. “ Good-by, monsieur, or rather au rcvoir . 
The library is open, and as I have sold all my books, I have 
to go there every day for my work. 

“I am grateful to you for the kind feeling you have shown ; 
but we must see whether you can show me such consideration 
as I am obliged to require of a neighbor. That is all I ask of 


“Yes, monsieur, pray accept me as your neighbor; for 
Barbet, as you know, is not the man to put up long with empty 
rooms, and you might meet with a worse companion in misery 
than I. I do not ask you to believe in me, only to allow me 
to be of use to you.” 

“And what interest can you have in serving me ? ” cried the 
old man, as he was about to go down the steps of the cloister 
of the Carthusians, through which there was at that time a 
passage from the broad walk of the Luxembourg to the Rue 
d’Enfer. 

“ Have you never, in the course of your career, obliged 
anybody? ” 

The old man looked at Godefroid with knit brows, his eyes 
vague with reminiscence, like a man searching through the 
record of his life for an action for which he might deserve such 
* Lit. trans.: I will sell the pear I have kept for a thirsty day. 


143 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


rare gratitude ; then he coldly turned away, after bowing with 
evident suspicion. 

“ Come ! for a first meeting he was not particularly dis- 
tant,” said the disciple to himself. 

Godefroid went at once to the Rue d’Enfer, the address 
given him by Monsieur Alain, and found Doctor Berton at 
home — a stern, cold man, who surprised him greatly by assur- 
ing him that the details given by Monsieur Bernard of his 
daughter’s illness were absolutely correct ; he then went in 
search of Doctor Halpersohn, whose address he obtained from 
Monsieur Berton. 

The Polish physician, since so famous, at that time lived at 
Chaillot, in a little house in the Rue Marbeuf, of which he oc- 
cupied the second floor. General Roman Zarnovicki lived 
on the first floor, and the servants of the two refugees 
occupied the attics of the little hotel, only one story high. 
Godefroid did not see the doctor ; he had been sent for to 
some distance in the country by a rich patient. But Gode- 
froid was almost glad not to have met him, for in his haste he 
had neglected to provide himself with money, and was obliged 
to return to the Hotel de la Chanterie to fetch some from his 
room. 

These walks, and the time it took to dine in a restaurant in 
the Rue de l’Odeon, kept him busy till the hour when he was 
to take possession of his lodgings on the Boulevard Mont- 
Parnasse. 

Nothing could be more wretched than the furniture provided 
by Madame Vauthier for the two rooms. It seemed as though 
the woman was in the habit of letting rooms not to be in- 
habited. The bed, the chairs, the tables, the drawers, the 
desk, the curtains, had all evidently been purchased at sales 
under compulsion of the law, where the money-lender had 
kept them on account, no cash value being obtainable — a not 
infrequent case. 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


149 


Madame Vauthier, her arms akimbo, expected thanks, and 
she took Godefroid’s smile for one of surprise. 

“Oh, yes, I have given you the best of everything, my 
dear Monsieur Godefroid,” said she with an air of triumph. 

“Look what handsome silk curtains, and a mahogany bed- 
stead that is not at all worm-eaten. It belonged to the Prince 
de Wissembourg, and was bought out of his mansion. When 
he left the Rue Louis-le-Grand, in 1809, I was scullery-maid 
in his kitchen, and from there I went to live with my land- 
lord ” 

Godefroid checked this confidential flow by paying his 
month’s lodging in advance, and at the same time gave Mad- 
ame Vauthier six francs, also in advance, for arranging and 
cleaning his rooms. At this moment he heard a bark ; and 
if he had not been forewarned, he might have thought that 
his neighbor kept a dog in his lodgings. 

“ Does that dog bark at night ? ” he asked. 

“ Oh, be easy, sir, and have patience ; there will not be 

above a week of it. Monsieur Bernard will not be able to 

pay his rent, and he will be turned out. Still, they are queer 
folk, I must say ! I never saw their dog. For months that 
dog — for months, did I say? for six months at a time you will 
never hear that dog, and you might think they didn’t keep 
one. The creature never comes out of madame’s room. 
There is a lady who is very bad ; she has never been out of 

her bed since they carried her in. Old Monsieur Bernard 

works very hard, and the son too, who is a day pupil at the 
College Louis-le-Grand, where he is in the top class for phil- 
osophy, and he is but sixteen. A bright chap that ! but that 
little beggar works like a good ’un. 

“ You will hear them presently moving the flower-pots in 
the lady’s room — for they eat nothing but dry bread, the old 
man and his grandson, but they buy flowers and nice things 
for her. She must be very bad, poor thing, never to have 
stirred out since she came ; and if you take Monsieur Berton’s 


150 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


word — he is the doctor who comes to see her — she never will 
go out but feet foremost.” 

“And what is this Monsieur Bernard?” 

“A very learned man, so they say; for he writes and goes 
to work in the public libraries, and the master lends him 
money on account of what he writes.” 

“The master — who? ” 

“The landlord, Monsieur Barbet, the old bookseller; he 
has been in business this sixteen years. He is a man from 
Normandy, who once sold salad in the streets, and who started 
as a dealer in old books on the quay, in 1818 ; then he set up 
a little store, and now he is very rich. He is a sort of old 
Jew who runs six-and-thirty businesses at once, for he was a 
kind of partner with the Italian who built this great barn to 
keep silkworms in ” 

“'And so the house is a place of refuge for authors in 
trouble?” said Godefroid. 

“Are you so unlucky as to be one?” asked the widow 
Vauthier. 

“ I am only a beginner,” said Godefroid. 

“ Oh, my good gentleman, for all the ill I wish you, never 
get any further ! A newspaper man, now — I won’t say ” 

Godefroid could not help laughing, and he bid the woman 
good-night — a cook unconsciously representing the whole 
middle-class. 

As he went to bed in the wretched room, floored with bricks 
that had not even been colored, and hung with paper at seven 
sous the piece, Godefroid not only regretted his little lodging 
in the Rue Chanoinesse, but more especially the society of 
Madame de la Chanterie. There was a great void in his soul. 
He had already acquired certain habits of mind, and he could 
not remember ever having felt such keen regrets for anything 
in his previous life. This comparison, brief as it was, made 
a great impression on his mind ; he understood that no life 
he could lead could compare with that he was about to em* 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 151 

brace, and his determination to follow in the steps of good 
Father Alain was thenceforth unchangeable. If he had not 
the vocation, he had the will. 

Next morning, Godefroid, whose new way of life accus- 
tomed him to rising very early, saw, out of his window, a 
youth of about seventeen, wearing a blouse, and coming in 
evidently from a public fountain, carrying in each hand a 
pitcher full of water. The lad’s face, not knowing that any 
one could see him, betrayed his thoughts ; and never had 
Godefroid seen one more guileless and more sad. The charm 
of youth was depressed by misery, study, and great physical 
fatigue. Monsieur Bernard’s grandson was remarkable for an 
excessively white skin, in strong contrast to very dark-brown 
hair. He made three expeditions; and the third time he saw 
a load of wood being delivered which Godefroid had ordered 
the night before ; for the winter, though late, of 1838 was 
beginning to be felt, and there had been a slight fall of snow 
in the night. 

Nepomucene, who had just begun his day’s work by fetching 
this wood, on which Madame Vauthier had already levied 
heavy toll, stood talking to the youth while waiting till the 
sawyer had cut up the logs for him to take indoors. It was 
very evident that the sight of this wood, and of the ominous 
gray sky, had reminded the lad of the desirability of laying 
in some fuel. And then suddenly, as if reproaching himself 
for waste of time, he took up the pitchers and hurried into 
the house. It was indeed half-past seven ; and as he heard 
the quarters strike by the clock at the convent of the Visita- 
tion, he reflected that he had to be at the College Louis-le- 
Grand by half-past eight. 

At the moment when the young man went in, Godefroid 
opened his door to Madame Vauthier, who was bringing up 
some live charcoal to her new lodger ; so it happened that he 
witnessed a scene that took place on the landing. A gardener 


152 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


living in the neighborhood, after ringing several times at 
Monsieur Bernard’s door without arousing anybody, for the 
bell was muffled in paper, had a rough dispute with the youth, 
insisting on the money due for the hire of plants which he 
had supplied. As the creditor raised his voice, Monsieur Ber- 
nard came out. 

‘‘Auguste,” said he to his grandson, “get dressed. It is 
time to be off.” 

He himself took the pitchers and carried them into the 
anteroom of his apartment, where Godefroid could see stands 
filled with flowers ; then he closed the door and came 
outside to talk to the nurseryman. Godefroid’s door was 
ajar, for Nepomucene was passing in and out and piling up 
the logs in the second room. The gardener had become 
silent when Monsieur Bernard appeared, wrapped in a purple 
silk dressing-gown, buttoned to the chin, and looking really 
imposing. 

“You might ask for the money we owe you without shout- 
ing,” said the gentleman. 

“ Be just, my dear sir,” replied the gardener. “ You were 
to pay me week by week, and now, for three months — ten 
weeks — I have had no money, and you owe me a hundred 
and twenty francs. We are accustomed to hire out our plants 
to rich people, who give us our money as soon as we ask for 
it, and I have called here five times. We have our rent to 
pay and our workmen, and I am no richer than you are. My 
wife, who used to supply you with milk and eggs, will not 
call this morning either ; you owe her thirty francs, and she 
would rather not come at all than come to nag, for she has a 
good heart, has my wife ! If I listened to her, trade would 
never pay. And that is why I came, you understand, for that 
is not my way of looking at things, you see ” 

Just then out came Auguste, dressed in a miserable green 
cloth coat, and trousers of the same, a black cravat, and 
shabby boots. These clothes, though brushed with care, re- 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


153 


vealed the very last extremity of poverty, for they were too 
short and too tight, so that they looked as if the least move- 
ment on the lad’s part would split them. The whitened 
seams, the dog’s-eared corners, the worn-out button-holes, in 
spite of mending, betrayed to the least practiced eye the 
stigma of poverty. This garb contrasted painfully with the 
youthfulness of the wearer, who went off eating a piece of 
stale bread, in which his fine strong teeth left their mark. 
This was his breakfast, eaten as he made his way from the 
Boulevard du Mont-Parnasse to the Rue Saint-Jacques, with 
his books and papers under his arm, and on his head a cap 
far too small for his powerful head and his mass of fine dark 
hair. 

As he passed his grandfather, they exchanged rapid glances 
of deep dejection ; for he saw that the old man was in almost 
irremediable difficulties of which the consequences might be 
terrible. To make way for the student of philosophy, the 
gardener retreated as far as Godefroid’s door; and at the 
moment when he reached the door, Nepomucene, with a load 
of wood, came up to the landing, driving the creditor quite 
to the window. 

“ Monsieur Bernard,” exclaimed the widow, “do you 
suppose that Monsieur Godefroid took these rooms for you to 
hold meetings in ? ” 

“I beg your pardon, madame,’* replied the nurseryman, 
“ the landing was crowded ” 

“I did not mean it for you, Monsieur Cartier,” said the 
woman. 

“ Stay here I ” cried Godefroid, addressing the nurseryman. 
“And you, my dear sir,” he added, turning to Monsieur 
Bernard, whom this insolent remark left unmoved, “if it 
suits you to settle matters with your gardener in my room, 
pray come in.” 

The old gentleman, stupefied with trouble, gave Godefroid 
a stony look, which conveyed a thousand thanks. 


154 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


“ As for you, my dear Madame Vauthier, do not be so 
rough to monsieur, who, in the first place, is an old man, and 
to whom you also owe your thanks for having me as your 
lodger.” 

“ Indeed ! ” exclaimed the woman. 

“Beside, if poor folk do not help each other, who is to 
help them? Leave us, Madame Vauthier; I can blow up my 
own fire. See to having my wood stowed in your cellar; I 
have no doubt you will take good care of it.” 

Madame Vauthier vanished ; for Godefroid, by placing his 
fuel in her charge, had afforded pasture to her greed. 

“Come in,” said Godefroid, signing to the gardener, and 
setting two chairs for the debtor and creditor. The old man 
talked standing ; the tradesman took a seat. 

“Come, my good man,” Godefroid went on, “the rich 
do not always pay so punctually as you say they do, and you 
should not dun a worthy gentleman for a few louis. Monsieur 
draws his pension every six months, and he cannot give you 
a draft in anticipation for so small a sum ; but I will advance 
the money if you insist on it.” 

“ Monsieur Bernard drew his pension about three weeks 
since, and he did not pay me. I should be very sorry to 
annoy him ” 

“What, and you have been supplying him with flowers 
for ” 

“Yes, monsieur, for six years, and he has always paid until 
now.” 

Monsieur Bernard, who was listening to all that might be 
going on in his own lodgings, and paying no heed to this dis- 
cussion, heard screams through the partition, and hurried 
away in alarm, without saying a word. 

“ Come, come, my good man, bring some fine flowers, your 
best flowers, this very morning, to Monsieur Bernard, and let 
your wife send in some fresh eggs and milk ; I will pay you 
myself this evening.” 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


155 


Cartier looked somewhat askance at Godefroid. 

“Well, I suppose you know more about it than Madame 
Vauthier ; she sent me word that I had better look sharp if I 
meant to be paid,” said he. “ Neither she nor I, sir, can ao 
count for it when people who live on bread, who pick up odds 
and ends of vegetables, and bits of carrots and potatoes and 
turnips outside the eating-house doors — yes, sir, I have seen 
the boy filling a little basket — well, when those people 
spend near on a hundred francs a month on flowers. The 
old man, they say, has but three thousand francs a year for his 
pension ” 

“ At any rate,” said Godefroid, ‘ if they ruin themselves in 
flowers, it is not for you to complain.” 

“ Certainly not, sir, so long as I am paid.” 

“ Bring me your bill.” 

“Very good, sir,” said the gardener, with rather more 
respect. “ You hope to see the lady they hide so carefully, 
no doubt ? ” 

“Come, come, my good fellow, you forget yourself,” said 
Godefroid stiffly. “ Go home and pick out your best flowers 
to replace those you are taking away. If you can supply me 
with rich milk and new-laid eggs, you may have my custom. 
I will go this morning and look at your place.” 

“ It is one of the best in Paris, and I exhibit at the Luxem- 
bourg shows. I have three acres of garden on the boulevard, 
just behind that of the Grande-Chaumidre ” (great thatched 
cottage). 

“ Very good, Monsieur Cartier. You are richer than I am, 
I can see. So have some consideration for us ; for who knows 
but that one day we may need each other.” 

The nurseryman departed, much puzzled as to what Gode- 
froid could be. 

“ And time was when I was just like that ! ” said Gode- 
froid to himself, as he blew the fire. “ What a perfect speci- 
men of the commonplace citizen ; a gossip, full of curiosity, 


156 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


possessed by the idea of equality, but jealous of other dealers ; 
furious at not knowing why a poor invalid stays in her room 
and is never seen ; secretive as to his profits, but vain enough 
to let out the secret if he could crow over his neighbor. Such 
a man ought to be lieutenant at least of his crew. How easily 
and how often in every age does the scene of Monsieur Di- 
manche recur ! Another minute, and Cartier would have been 
my sworn ally ! ” 

The old man’s return interrupted this soliloquy, which 
shows how greatly Godefroid’s ideas had changed during the 
past four months. 

“I beg your pardon,” said Monsieur Bernard, in a husky 
voice, “ I see you have sent off the nurseryman quite satisfied, 
for he bowed politely. In fact, my young friend, Providence 
seems to have sent you here for our express benefit at the very 
moment when all seemed at an end. Alas ! The man’s 
chatter must have told you many things. It is quite true that 
I drew my half-year’s pension a fortnight since ; but I had 
other and more pressing debts, and I was obliged to keep back 
the money for the rent or be turned out of doors. You, to 
whom I have confided the secret of my daughter’s state — who 
have heard her ” 

He looked anxiously at Godefroid, who nodded affirma- 
tion. 

“ Well, you can judge if that would not be her death-blow. 
For I should have to place her in a hospital. My grandson 
and I have been dreading this day, not that Cartier was our 
chief fear; it is the cold -” 

“ My dear Monsieur Bernard, I have plenty of wood ; take 
some ! ” cried Godefroid. 

“But how can I ever repay such kindness? ” said the old 
man. 

“By accepting it without ceremony,” answered Godefroid 
cordially, “and by giving me your entire confidence.” 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


157 


“But what claims have T on such generosity?” asked 
Monsieur Bernard with revived suspicions. “ My pride and 
my grandson’s is broken!” he exclaimed. “For we have 
already fallen so low as to argue with our two or three creditors. 
The very poor can have no creditors. Only those can owe 
money who keep up a certain external display which we have 
utterly lost. But I have not yet lost my commonsense, my 
reason,” he added, as if speaking to himself. 

“ Monsieur,” said Godefroid gravely, “ the story you told 
me yesterday would draw tears from an usurer ” 

“ No, no ! for Barbet the publisher, our landlord, speculates 
on my poverty, and sets his old servant, the woman Vauthier, 
to spy it out.” 

“ How can he speculate on it?” asked Godefroid. 

“ I will tell you at another time,” replied the old man. 
“ My daughter may be feeling cold, and since you are so kind, 
and since I am in a situation to accept charity, even if it were 
from my worst enemy ” 

“ I will carry the wood,” said Godefroid, who went across 
the landing with half a score of logs, which he laid down in 
his neighbor’s outer room. 

Monsieur Bernard had taken an equal number, and when 
he beheld this little stock of fuel, he could not conceal the 
simple, almost idiotic smile, by which men rescued from 
moral and apparently inevitable danger express their joy, for 
there is still fear even in their belief. 

“ Accept all I can give you, my dear Monsieur Bernard, 
without hesitation, and when we have saved your daughter, 
and you are happy once more, I will explain everything. Till 
then leave everything to me. I went to call on the Jewish 
doctor, but unfortunately Halpersohn is absent ; he will not 
be back for two days.” 

Just then a voice which sounded to Godefroid, and which 
really was, sweet and youthful, called out, “ Papa, papa t ” 
\n expressive tone. 


158 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


While talking to the old man, Godefroid had already 
remarked, through the crack of the door opposite to that on 
the landing, lines of neat white paint, showing that the sick 
woman’s room must be very different from the others that 
composed the lodging. His curiosity was now raised to the 
highest pitch ; the errand of mercy was to him no more than a 
means; its end was to see the invalid. He would not believe 
that any one who spoke in such a voice could be horrible to 
behold. 

“ You are taking too much trouble, papa,” said the voice. 
“ Why do not you have more servants — at your age? Dear 
me ! ” 

“ But you know, dear Vanda, that I will not allow any one 
to wait on you but myself or your boy.” 

These two sentences, which Godefroid overheard, though 
with some difficulty, for a curtain dulled the sound, made him 
understand the case. The sick woman, surrounded by every 
luxury, knew nothing of the real state in which her father and 
son lived. Monsieur Bernard’s silk wrapper, the flowers, and 
his conversation with Cartier had already roused Godefroid’s 
suspicions, and he stood riveted, almost confounded, by this 
marvel of paternal devotion. The contrast between the 
invalid’s room as he imagined it and what he saw was in fact 
amazing. The reader may judge : 

Through the door of a third room which stood open, 
Godefroid saw two narrow beds of painted wood like those 
of the vilest lodging-houses, with a straw mattress and a thin 
upper mattress ; on each there was but one blanket. A small 
iron stove such as porters use to cook on, with a few lumps 
of dried fuel by the side of it, was enough to show the desti- 
tution of the owner, without other details in keeping with this 
wretched stove. 

Godefroid by one step forward could see the pots and pans 
of the wretched household — glazed earthenware jars, in which 
a few potatoes were soaking in dirty water. Two tables of 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


159 


blackened wood, covered with papers and books, stood in 
front of a window looking out on the Rue Notre-Dame des 
Champs, and showed how the father and son occupied them- 
selves in the evening. On each table there was a candlestick 
of wrought-iron of the poorest description, and in them 
candles of the cheapest kind, eight to the pound. On a 
third table, which served as a dresser, there were two shining 
sets of silver-gilt forks and spoons, some plates, a basin and 
cup in Sevres china, and a knife with a gilt handle lying in a 
case, all evidently for the invalid’s use. 

The stove was alight ; the water in the kettle was steaming 
gently. A wardrobe of painted deal contained no doubt the 
lady’s linen and possessions, for he saw on her father’s bed 
the clothes he had worn the day before, spread by way of a 
covering. 

Some other rags laid in the same way on his grandson’s bed 
led him to conclude that this was all their wardrobe; and 
under the bed he saw their shoes. 

The floor, swept but seldom no doubt, was like that of a 
schoolroom. A large loaf that had been cut was visible on a 
shelf over the table. In short, it was poverty in the last stage 
of squalor, poverty reduced to a system, with the decent order 
of a determination to endure it; driven poverty that has to 
do everything at home, that insists on doing it, but that finds 
it impossible, and so puts every poor possession to a wrong 
use. A strong and sickening smell pervaded the room, which 
evidently was but rarely cleaned. 

The anteroom where Godefroid stood was at any rate de- 
cent, and he guessed that it commonly served to hide the 
horrors of the room inhabited by the old man and the youth. 
This room, hung with a Scotch plaid paper, had four walnut' 
wood chairs and a small table, and was graced with portraits 
— a colored print of Horace Vernet’s picture of the Emperor ; 
those of Louis XVIII. and Charles X.; and one of Prince 
Poniatowski, a friend no doubt of Monsieur Bernard’s father- 


160 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY \ 


in-law. There were cotton window-curtains bound with red 
and finished with fringe. 

Godefroid, keeping an eye on Nepomucfcne, and hearing 
him come up with a load of wood, signed to him to stack it 
noiselessly in Monsieur Bernard’s anteroom ; and, with a deli- 
cate feeling that showed he was making good progress, he shut 
the bedroom door that Madame Vauthier’s boy might not see 
the old man’s squalor. 

The anteroom was partly filled up by three flower-stands, 
full of splendid plants, two oval and one round, all three of 
rosewood, and elegantly finished ; and Nepomuc&ne, as he 
placed the logs on the floor, could not help saying — 

“ Isn’t that lovely? Ain’t the flowers handsome? It must 
have cost a pretty penny ! ” 

‘‘Jean, do not make too much noise ” Monsieur Ber- 

nard called out. 

“There, you hear him?” said Nepomucdne to Godefroid, 
“ the poor old boy is certainly cracked ! ” 

“And what will you be at his age?” 

“Oh, I know sure enough 1 ” said Nepomuc&ne; “I shall 
be in a sugar-basin.” 

“In a sugar-basin ? ” 

“ Yes, my bones will have been made into charcoal. I 
have seen the sugar-boilers’ carts often enough at Mont-Souris 
come to fetch bone-black for their works, and they told me 
they used it in making sugar.” And with this philosophical 
reply, he went off for another basketful of wood. 

Godefroid quietly closed Monsieur Bernard’s door, leaving 
him alone with his daughter. 

Madame Vauthier had meanwhile prepared her new lodger’s 
breakfast, and came with Felicite to serve it. Godefroid, 
lost in meditation, was staring at the fire on the hearth. He 
was absorbed in reflecting on this poverty that included so 
many different forms of misery, though he perceived that it 
had its pleasures too; the ineffable joys and triumphs of 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


161 


fatherly and of filial devotion. They were like pearls sewn 
on sackcloth. 

“ What romance — even the most famous — can compare 
with such reality?” thought he. “How noble is the life 
that mingles with such lives as these, enabling the soul to dis- 
cern their cause and effect; to assuage suffering and encourage 
what is good ; to become one with misfortune and learn the 
secrets of such a home as this ; to be an actor in ever-new 
dramas such as delight us in the works of the most famous 
authors ! I had no idea that goodness could be more inter- 
esting than vice.” 

“Is everything to your mind, sir?” asked Madame Vau- 
thier, who, helped by Felicite, had placed the table close to 
Godefroid. He then saw an excellent cup of coffee with 
milk, a smoking hot omelette, fresh butter, and little red 
radishes. 

“ Where did you find those radishes? ” asked Godefroid. 

“Monsieur Cartier gave them to me,” said she. “I 
thought you might like them, sir.” 

“And what do you expect me to pay for a breakfast like 
this every day?” said Godefroid. 

“ Well, monsieur, to be quite fair — it would be hard to 
supply it under thirty sous.” 

“ Say thirty sous,” said Godefroid. “But how is it that 
close by this, at Madame Machillot’s, they only ask me forty- 
five francs a month for dinner, which is just thirty sous a day ? ” 

“Oh, but what a difference, sir, between getting a dinner 
for fifteen people and going to buy everything that is needed 
for one breakfast : a roll, you see, eggs, butter — lighting the 
fire — and then sugar, milk, coffee. Why, they will ask you 
sixteen sous for nothing but a cup of coffee with milk in the 
Place de l’Odeon, and you have to give a sou or two to the 
waiter ! Here you have no trouble at all ; you breakfast at 
home, in your slippers.” 

“Well, then, it is settled,” said Godefroid. 

11 


162 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY, 


“And even then, but for Madame Cartier, from whom I 
get the milk and eggs and parsley, I could not do it at all. 
You must go and see their place, sir. Oh, it is really a fine 
sight. They employ five gardeners’ apprentices, and Nepo- 
mucdne goes to help with the watering all the summer ; they 
pay me to let him go. And they make a lot of money out of 
stiawberries and melons. You are very much interested in 
Monsieur Bernard, it would seem? ” asked the widow in her 
sweetest tones. “For really to answer for their debts in that 
way! But perhaps you don’t know how much they owe. 
There is the lady that keeps the circulating library on the 
Place Saint-Michel ; she calls every three or four days for 
thirty francs, and she wants it badly too. Heaven above ! 
that poor woman in bed does read and read. And at two 
sous a volume, thirty francs in two months ” 

“ Is a hundred volumes a month,” said Godefroid. 

“There goes the old fellow to fetch madame’s cream and 
roll,” the woman went on. “It is for her tea; for she lives 
on nothing but tea, that lady ; she has it twice a day, and 
then twice a week she wants sweets. She is dainty, I can tell 
you ! The old boy buys her cakes and pies at the pastry- 
cook’s in the Rue de Buci. Oh, when it is for her, he sticks 
at nothing. He says she is his daughter ! Where’s the man 
who would do all he does, and at his age, for his daughter ? 
He is killing himself — himself and his Auguste — and all for 
her. If you are like me, sir — I would give twenty francs to 
see her. Monsieur Berton says she is shocking, an object to 
make a show of. They did well to come to this part of the 
town where nobody ever comes. And you think of dining at 
Madame Machillot’s, sir?” 

“ Yes, I thought of making an arrangement with her.” 

“Well, sir, it is not to interfere with any plan of youis; 
but, take 'em as you find ’em, you will find a better eating- 
place in the Rue de Tournon ; you need not bind yourself for 
a month, and you will have a better table ” 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


163 


** Where in the Rue de Tournon ? ” 

“At the successors of old Madame Girard. That is where 
the gentlemen upstairs dine, and they are satisfied — they could 
not be better pleased.” 

“ Very well, Madame Vaulhier, I will take your advice and 
dine there.” 

“And, my dear sir,” the woman went on, emboldened by 
the easy-going air which Godefroid had intentionally assumed, 
“ do you mean to say, seriously, that you are such a flat as to 
think of paying Monsieur Bernard’s debts? I should be really 
very sorry; for you must remember, my good Monsieur Gode- 
froid, that he is very near on seventy, and after him where are 
you? There’s an end to his pension. What will there be to 
repay you? Young men are so rash. Do you know that he 
owes above a thousand crowns? ” 

“ But to whom ? ” asked Godefroid. 

“Oh, that is no concern of mine,” said Madame Vauthier 
mysteriously. “ He owes the money, and that’s enough ; and 
between you and me, he is having a hard time of it ; he can- 
not get credit for a sou in all the neighborhood for that very 
reason.” 

“A thousand crowns! ” said Godefroid. “Be sure of one 
thing; if I had a thousand crowns, I should be no lodger of 
yours. But I, you see, cannot bear to see others suffering; 
and for a few hundred francs that it may cost me, I will make 
sure that my neighbor, a man with white hair, has bread and 
firing. Why, a man often loses as much at cards. But 
three thousand francs — why, what do you think? Good 
heavens ! ” 

Madame Vauthier, quite taken in by Godefroid’s affected 
candor, allowed a gleam of satisfaction to light up her face, 
and this confirmed her lodger’s suspicions. Godefroid was 
convinced that the old woman was implicated in some plot 
against the hapless Monsieur Bernard. 

“It is a strange thing, monsieur, what fancies come into 


164 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


one’s head. You will say that 1 am very inquisitive ; but yes- 
terday, when I saw you talking to Monsieur Bernard, it struck 
me that you must be a publisher’s clerk — for this is their part 
of the town. I had a lodger, a foreman printer, whose works 
are in the Rue de Vaugirard, and he was named the same 
name as you ” 

“And what concern is it of yours what my business is?” 
said Godefroid. 

“Lor’ ! whether you tell me or whether you don’t, I shall 
know just the same,” said the widow. “Look at Monsieur 
Bernard, for instance; well, for eighteen months I could never 
find out what he was; but in the nineteenth month I discovered 
that he had been a judge or a magistrate, or something of the 
kind, in the law, and that now he is writing a book about it. 
What does he get by it ? That’s what I say. And if he had 
told me, I should have held my tongue ; so there ! ” 

“ I am not at present a publisher’s agent, but I may be, 
perhaps, before long.” 

“There, I knew it ! ” exclaimed the woman eagerly, and 
turning from the bed she was making as an excuse to stay 
chattering to her lodger. “You have come to cut the 

ground from under Well, well, a ‘ nod’s as good as a 

wink’ ” 

“ Hold hard ! ” cried Godefroid, standing between Mad- 
ame Vauthier and the door. “ Now, tell me, what are you 
paid for meddling in this?” 

“Heyday!” cried the old woman, with a keen look at 
Godefroid. “ You are pretty sharp after all ! ” 

She shut and locked the outer door ; then she came back 
and sat down by the fire. 

“ On my word and honor, as sure as my name is Vauthier, 
I took you for a student till I saw you giving your logs to 
old Father Bernard. My word, but you’re a sharp one ! By 
the Piper, you can play a part well ! I thought you were a 
perfect flat. Now, will you promise me a thousand francs? 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


165 


For as sure as the day above us, old Barbet and Monsieur 
Metivier have promised me five hundred if I keep my eyes 
open.” 

“What? Not they! Two hundred at the very outside, 
my good woman, and only promised at that — and you cannot 
summons them for payment ! Look here ; if you will put me 
in a position to get the job they are trying to manage with 
Monsieur Bernard, I will give you four hundred ! Come, 
now, what are they up to?” 

“Well, they have paid him fifteen hundred francs on ac- 
count for his work, and made him sign a bill for a thousand 
crowns. They doled it out to him a hundred francs at a 
time, contriving to keep him as poor as poor. They set the 
duns upon him ; they sent Cartier, you may wager.” 

At this, Godefroid, by a look of cynical perspicacity that 
he shot at the woman, made it clear to her that he quite un- 
derstood the game she was playing for her landlord’s benefit. 
Her speech threw a light on two sides of the question, for it 
also explained the rather strange scene between the gardener 
and himself. 

“ Oh, yes ! ” she went on, “ they have him fast ; for wher- 
ever is he to find a thousand crowns ! They intend to offer 
him five hundred francs when the work is in their hands com- 
plete, and five hundred francs per volume as they are brought 
out for sale. The business is all in the name of a bookseller 
these gentlemen have set up in business on the Quai des 
Augustins ” 

“ Oh, yes — that little — what’s-his-name ? ” 

“Yes, that’s your man. Morand, formerly Monsieur Bar- 
bet’s agent. There is a heap of money to be got out of it, it 
would seem.” 

“There will be a heap of money to put into it,” said 
Godefroid, with an expressive grimace. 

There was a gentle knock at the door, and Godefroid, very 
glad of the interruption, rose to open it. 


166 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY, 


“ All this is between you and me, Mother Vauthier,” said 
Godefroid, seeing Monsieur Bernard. 

“ Monsieur Bernard,” cried she, “ I have a letter for you.” 

The old man went down a few steps. 

“ No, no, I have no letter for you, Monsieur Bernard ; 1 
only wished to warn you against that young fellow there. He 
is a publisher.” 

“Oh, that accounts for everything,” said the old man to 
himself. And he came back to his neighbor’s room with a 
quite altered countenance. 

The calmly cold expression on Monsieur Bernard’s face 
when he reappeared was in such marked contrast to the frank 
and friendly manner his gratitude had lent him, that Godefroid 
was struck by so sudden a change. 

“ Monsieur, forgive me for disturbing your solitude, but 
you have since yesterday loaded me with favors, and a bene- 
factor confers rights on those whom he obliges.” 

Godefroid bowed. 

“ I, who for five years have suffered once a fortnight the 
torments of the Redeemer; I, who for six-and-thirty years 
was the representative of Society and the Government, who 
was then the arm of public vengeance, and who, as you may 
suppose, have no illusions left — nothing, nothing but suffer- 
ings. Well, monsieur, your careful attention in closing the 
door of the dog-kennel in which my grandson and I sleep — 
that trifling act was to me the cup of water of which Bossuet 
speaks. I found in my heart, my worn-out heart, which is as 
dry of tears as my withered body is of sweat, the last drop of 
that elixir which in youth leads us to see the best side of every 
human action, and I came to offer you my hand, which I 
never give to any one but my daughter ; I came to bring you 
the heavenly rose of belief, even now, in goodness.” 

“ Monsieur Bernard,” said Godefroid, remembering good 
old Alain’s injunctions, “ I did nothing with a view to win- 
ning your gratitude. You are under a mistake.” 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


167 


“That is frank and above board,” said the old lawyer. 
“Well, that is what I like. I was about to reproach you. 
Forgive me ; I esteem you. So you are a publisher, and you 
want to get my book in preference to Messieurs Barbet, 
Metivier, and Morand ? That explains all. You are prepared 
to deal with me as they were; only you do it with a good 
grace.” 

“Old Vauthier has just told you, I suppose, that I am a 
publisher’s agent ? ” 

“ Yes,” said he. 

“ Well, Monsieur Bernard, before I can say what we are pre- 
pared to pay more than those gentlemen offer, I must under- 
stand on’ what terms you stand with them.” 

“Very true,” said the old man, who seemed delighted to find 
himself the object of a competition by which he could not 
fail to benefit. “ Do you know what the work is? ” 

“ No ; I only know that there is something to be made by 
it.” 

“ It is only half-past nine ; my daughter has had her break- 
fast, my grandson Auguste will not come in till a quarter to 
eleven. Cartier will not be here with the flowers for an hour — 
we have time to talk, monsieur — monsieur who ? ” 

“ Godefroid.” 

“ Monsieur Godefroid. The book in question was planned 
by me in 1825, at a time when the Ministry, struck by the 
constant reduction of personal estate, drafted the Law of 
Entail and Seniority which was thrown out. I had observed 
many defects in our codes and in the fundamental principle 
of French law. The laws have been the subject of many 
important works ; but all those treatises are essentially on juris- 
prudence; no one has been so bold as to study the results of 
the Revolution — or of Napoleon’s rule, if you prefer it — as 
a whole, analyzing the spirit of these laws and the working 
of their application. That is, in general terms, the purpose 
of my book. I have called it the ‘ Spirit of the Modern 


168 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY, 


Laws.’ It covers organic law as well as the codes — all the 
codes, for we have five ! My book, too, is in five volumes, 
and a sixth volume of authorities, quotations, and references. 
I have still three months’ work before me. 

“ The owner of this house, a retired publisher, scented a 
speculation. I, in the first instance, thought only of bene- 
fiting my country. This Barbet has got the better of me. 
You will wonder how a publisher could entrap an old lawyer; 
but you, monsieur, know my history, and this man is a money- 
lender. He has the sharp eye and the knowledge of the 
world that such men must have. His advances have just kept 
pace with my necessity ; he has always come in at the very 
moment when despair has made me a defenseless prey.” 

“Not at all, my dear sir,” said Godefroid. “He has 
simply kept Madame Vauthier as a spy. But the terms. Tell 
me honestly.” 

“ They advanced me fifteen hundred francs, represented at 
the present rates by three bills for a thousand francs each, and 
these three thousand francs are secured to them by a lien on 
the property of my book, which I cannot dispose of else- 
where till I have paid off the bills; the bills have been pro- 
tested ; judgment has been pronounced. Here, monsieur, you 
see the complications of poverty. 

“At the most moderate estimate, the first edition of this 
vast work, the result of ten years’ labor and thirty-six years’ 
experience, will be well worth ten thousand francs. Well, 
just five days since, Morand offered me a thousand crowns and 
my note of hand paid off for all rights. As I could never 
find three thousand two hundred and forty francs, unless you 
intervene between us, I must yield. 

“ They would not take my word of honor; for further se- 
curity they insisted on bills of exchange which have been pro- 
tested, and I shall be imprisoned for debt. If I pay up, these 
money-lenders will have doubled their loan ; if I deal with 
them, they will make a fortune, for one of them was a paper- 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


169 


maker, and God only knows how low they can keep the price 
of materials. And then, with my name to it, they know that 
they are certain of a sale of ten thousand copies.” 

“ Why, monsieur — you, a retired judge !” 

“ What can I say ? I have not a friend, no one remembers 
me ! And yet I saved many heads even if I sentenced many 
to fall ! And then there is my daughter, my daughter whose 
nurse and companion I am, for I work only at night. Ah ! 
young man, none but the wretched should be set to judge the 
wretched. I see now that of yore I was too severe.” 

“ I do not ask you your name, monsieur. I have not a 
thousand crowns at my disposal, especially if I pay Halper- 
sohn and your little bills; but I can save you if you will 
pledge your word not to dispose of your book without due 
notice to me; it is impossible to embark in so important a 
matter without consulting professional experts. The persons 
I work for are powerful, and I can promise you success if you 
can promise me perfect secrecy, even from your children — and 
keep your word.” 

“ The only success I care for is my poor Vanda’s recovery; 
for, I assure you, the sight of such sufferings extinguishes 
every other feeling in a father’s heart ; the loss of fame is 
nothing to the man who sees a grave yawning at his feet ” 

“ I will call on you this evening. Halpersohn may come 
home at any moment, and I go every day to see if he has re- 
turned. I will spend to-day in your service.” 

“ Oh, if you could bring about my daughter’s recovery, 

monsieur , monsieur, I would make you a present of my 

book! ” 

“ But,” said Godefroid, “ I am not a publisher.” 

The old man started with surprise. 

“ I could not help letting old Vauthier think so for the sake 
of ascertaining what snares had been laid for you.” 

“ But who are you, then ? ” 

“Godefroid,” was the reply; “and as you have allowed 


170 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


me to supply you with the means of living better,” added 
the young man, smiling, “ you may call me Godefroid de 
Bouillon.”* 

The old lawyer was too much touched to laugh at the jest. 
He held out his hand to Godefroid and grasped the young 
man’s warmly. 

“You wish to remain unknown?” said Monsieur Bernard, 
looking at Godefroid with melancholy, mixed with some un- 
easiness. 

“ If you will allow me.” 

“ Well, do as you think proper. And come in this evening; 
you will see my daughter, if her state allows.” 

This was evidently the greatest concession the poor father 
could make ; and seeing Godefroid’s grateful look, the old 
man had the pleasure of feeling that he was understood. 

An hour later Cartier came back with some beautiful 
flowers, replanted the stands with his own hands in fresh moss, 
and Godefroid paid the bill, as he did the subscription to the 
lending library, for which the account was sent in soon after. 
Books and flowers were the staff of life to this poor sick, or, 
rather, tormented woman, who could live on so little food. 

As he thought of this family in the coils of disaster, like 
that of Laocoon — a sublime allegory of many lives ! — Gode- 
froid, making his way leisurely on foot to the Rue Marbeuf, 
felt in his heart that he was curious rather than benevolent. 
The idea of the sick woman, surrounded with luxuries in the 
midst of abject squalor, made him forget the horrible details 
of the strange nervous malady, which is happily an extraordi- 
nary exception, though abundantly proved by various histo- 
rians. One of our gossiping chronicle writers, Tallemant des 
Reaux, mentions an instance. We like to think of women as 
elegant even in their worst sufferings, and Godefroid promised 
himself some pleasure in penetrating into the room which only 
* A strong, clear soup. 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


171 


the physician, the father, and the son had entered for six years 
past. However, he ended by reproaching himself for his curi- 
osity. The neophyte even understood that his feeling, however 
natural, would die out by degrees as he carried out his merciful 
errands, by dint of seeing new homes and new sorrows. Such 
messengers, in fact, attain to a heavenly benignity which 
nothing can shock or amaze, just as in love we attain to a 
sublime quiescence of feeling in the conviction of its strength 
and duration, by a constant habit of submission and sweet- 
ness. 

Godefroid was told that Halpersohn had come home during 
the night, but had been obliged to go out in his carriage the 
first thing in the morning to see the patients who were awaiting 
him. The woman at the gate told Godefroid to come back 
next morning before nine. 

Remembering Monsieur Alain’s advice as to parsimony in 
his personal expenses, Godefroid dined for twenty-five sous in 
the Rue de Tournon, and was rewarded for his self-denial by 
finding himself among compositors and proof-readers. He 
heard a discussion about the cost of production, and, joining 
in, picked up the information that an octavo volume of forty 
sheets, of which a thousand copies were printed, would not 
cost more than thirty sous per copy under favorable circum- 
stances. He determined on going to inquire the price com- 
monly asked for such volumes on sale at the law publishers, so 
as to be in a position to dispute the point with the publishers 
who had a hold on Monsieur Bernard, if he should happen to 
meet them. 

At about seven in the evening he came back to the Boulevard 
Mont-Parnasse along the Rue de Vaugirard, the Rue Madame, 
and the Rue de l’Ouest, and he saw how deserted that part 
of the town is, for he met nobody. It is true that the cold 
was severe, snow fell in large flakes, and the carts made no 
noise on the stones. 

“Ah, here you are, monsieur ! ” said Madame Vauthier 
T 


172 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


when she saw him. “ If I had known you would come in so 
early, 1 would have lighted your fire.” 

“It is unnecessary,” replied Godefroid, as the woman fol- 
lowed him; “ I am going to spend the evening with Monsieur 
Bernard.’ 1 

“Ah! ver) good. You are cousins, I suppose, that you are 
hand and glove with him by the second day. I thought, per- 
haps, you would have liked to finish what we were saying ” 

“Oh, about the four hundred francs! ” said Godefroid in 
an undertone. “Look here, Mother Vauthier, you would 
have had them this evening if you had said nothing to Mon- 
sieur Bernard. You want to hunt with the hounds and run 
with the hare, and you will get neither ; for, so far as I am 
concerned, you have spoiled my game — my chances are alto- 
gether ruined ” 

“ Don’t you believe that, my good sir. To-morrow, when 
you are at breakfast ” 

“Oh, to-morrow I must be off at daybreak like your 
authors.” 

Godefroid’s past experience and life as a dandy and jour- 
nalist had been so far of use to him as to lead him to guess 
that if he did not take this line, Barbet’s spy would warn the 
publisher that there was something in the wind, and he would 
then take such steps as would ere long endanger Monsieur 
Bernard’s liberty; whereas, by leaving the three usurious 
negotiators to believe that their schemes were not in peril, 
they would keep quiet. 

But Godefroid was not yet a match for Parisian humanity 
when it assumes the guise of a Madame Vauthier. This 
woman meant to have Godefroid’s money and her landlord’s 
too. She flew right off to Monsieur Barbet, while Godefroid 
changed his dress to call on Monsieur Bernard’s daughter. 

Eight o’clock was striking at the convent of the Visitation, 
whose clock regulated the life of the whole neighborhood, 
when Godefroid, very full of curiosity, knocked at his friend’s 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


173 


door. Auguste opened it; as it was Saturday, the lad 
spent his evening at home ; Godefroid saw that he wore a 
jacket of black velvet, black trousers that were quite decent, 
and a blue silk tie; but his surprise at seeing the youth so 
unlike his usual self ceased when he entered the invalid’s 
room. He at once understood the necessity for the father 
and the boy to be presentably dressed. 

The walls of the room, hung with yellow silk, paneled with 
bright green cord, made the room look extremely cheerful ; 
the cold tiled floor was covered by a flowered carpet on a 
white ground. The two windows, with their handsome cur- 
tains lined with white silk, were like bowers, the flower-stands 
were so full of beauty, and blinds hindered them from being 
seen from outside in a quarter where such lavishness was rare. 
The woodwork, painted white, and varnished, was touched up 
with gold lines. A heavy curtain, embroidered in tent-stitch 
with grotesque foliage on a yellow ground, hung over the door 
and deadened every sound from outside. This splendid cur- 
tain had been worked by the invalid, who embroidered like a 
fairy when she had the use of her hands. 

Opposite the door, at the farther end of the room, the 
mantel-shelf, covered with green velvet, had a set of very 
costly ornaments, the only relic of the wealth of the two 
families. There was a very curious clock ; an elephant sup- 
porting a porcelain tower filled with beautiful flowers ; two 
candelabra in the same style, and some valuable Oriental 
pieces. The fender, the dogs, and and-irons were all of the 
finest workmanship. 

The largest of the three flower-stands stood in the middle 
of the room, and above it hung a porcelain chandelier of 
floral design. 

i'he bed on which the judge’s daughter lay was one of 
those fine examples of carved wood, painted white and gold, 
that were made in the time of Louis XV. By the invalid’s 
pillow was a pretty inlaid table, on which were the various 


174 


THE SEAMY S/HE OF HISTORY. 


objects necessary for a life spent in bed ; a light bracket foi 
two candles was fixed to the wall, and could be turned back- 
ward and forward by a touch. In front of her was a bed- 
table, wonderfully contrived for her convenience. The bed 
was covered with a magnificent counterpane, and draped with 
curtains looped back in festoons; it was loaded with books 
and a work-basket, and among these various objects Godefroid 
would hardly have discovered the sick woman but for the 
tapers in the two candle-branches. 

There seemed to be nothing of her but a very white face, 
darkly marked round the eyes by much suffering ; her eyes 
shone like fire ; and her principal ornament was her splendid 
black hair, of which the heavy curls, set out in bunches of 
numerous ringlets, showed that the care and arrangement of 
her hair occupied a great part of the invalid’s day; a movable 
mirror at the foot of the bed confirmed the idea. 

No kind of modern elegance was lacking, and a few trifling 
toys for poor Vanda’s amusement showed that her father’s 
affection verged on mania. 

The old man rose from a very handsome fasy-chair of Louis 
XV. style, white and gold, and covered with needlework, 
and went forward a few steps to welcome Godefroid, who 
certainly would not have recognized him ; for his cold, stern 
face had assumed the gay expression peculiar to old men who 
have preserved their dignity of manner and the superficial 
frivolity of courtiers. His purple, wadded dressing-gown 
was in harmony with the luxury about him, and he took snuff 
out of a gold box set with diamonds. 

“ Here, my dear,” said Monsieur Bernard to his daughter, 
“ is our neighbor of whom I spoke to you.” And he signed 
to his grandson to bring forward one of two armchairs, in the 
same style as his own, which were standing on either side of 
the fireplace. 

“ Monsieur’s name is Godefroid, and he is most kind m 
standing on no ceremony } ' } 




















































‘here, my dear, is our neighbor of whom 


SPOKE 


TO YOU." 




jWW'v j 



u 1 


3 

t< UX ' 44 v. ■ 

1 T f s * x; 4 ; • 

sms 


































« 















































* 

\ 








































* 























% 


























THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


175 


Vanda moved her head in acknowledgment of Godefroid’s 
low bow ; and by the movement of her throat as it bent and 
unbent, he discovered that all this woman’s vitality was seated 
in her head. Her emaciated arms and lifeless hands lay on 
the fine white sheet like objects quite apart from the body, 
and that seemed to fill no space in the bed. The things 
needed for her use were on a set of shelves behind the bed, 
and screened by a silk curtain. 

“You, my dear sir, are the first person, excepting only the 
doctors — who have ceased to be men to me — whom I have set 
eyes on for six years ; so you can have no idea of the interest 
I have felt in you ever since my father told me you were 
coming to call on us. It was passionate, unconquerable curi- 
osity, like that of our mother Eve. My father, who is so good 
to me ; my son, of whom I am so fond, are undoubtedly 
enough to fill up the vacuum of a soul now almost bereft of 
body ; but that soul is still a woman’s after all ! I recognized 
that in the childish joy I felt in the idea of your visit. You 
will do me the pleasure of taking a cup of tea with us, I 
hope ? ” 

“Yes, Monsieur Godefroid has promised us the pleasure of 
his company for the evening,” said the old man, with the air 
of a millionaire doing the honors of his house. 

Auguste, seated in a low, worsted-work chair by a small 
table of inlaid wood, finished with brass mouldings, was read- 
ing a book by the light of the wax-candles on the elegant 
chimney-shelf. 

“Auguste, my dear, tell Jean to bring tea in an hour’s 
time.” 

She spoke with some pointed meaning, and Auguste replied 
by a nod. 

“ Will you believe, monsieur, that for the past six years no 
one lias waited on me but my father and my boy, and I could 
not endure anybody else. If I were to lose them, I should 
die of it. My father will not even allow Jean, a poor old 


176 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


Normandy peasant who has lived with us for thirty years — will 
not even let him come into the room.” 

“ I should think not, indeed ! ” said the old man readily. 
“ Monsieur Godefroid has seen him; he saws and brings in 
wood, he cooks and runs errands, and wears a dirty apron ; he 
would have made hash of all these pretty things, which are so 
necessary to my poor child, to whom this elegance is second 
nature.” 

“ Indeed, madame, your father is quite right ” 

“But, why?” she urged. “If Jean had damaged my 
room, my father would have renewed it.” 

“ Of course, my child ; but what would have prevented me 
is the fact that you cannot leave it ; and you have no idea 
what Paris workmen are. It would take them more than 
three months to restore your room. Only think of the dust 
that would come out of your carpet if it were taken up. Let 
Jean do your room! Do not think of such a thing. By 
taking the extreme care which only your father and your boy 
can take, we have spared you sweeping and dust ; if Jean came 
in to help, everything would be broken and done for in a 
month.” 

“ It is not so much out of economy as for the sake of your 
health,” said Godefroid. “Monsieur your father is quite 
right.” 

“ Oh, I am not complaining,” said Vanda in a saucy tone. 

Her voice had the quality of a concert; soul, action, and 
life were all concentrated in her eyes and her voice ; for 
Vanda, by careful practice, for which time had certainly not 
been lacking, had succeeded in overcoming the difficulties 
arising from her loss of teeth. 

“ I am still happy, monsieur, in spite of the dreadful malady 
that tortures me ; for wealth is certainly a great help in en- 
during my sufferings. If we had been in poverty, I should 
have died eighteen years ago, and I am still alive. I have 
many enjoyments, and they are all the keener because i iive 


7 HR SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 177 

on, triumphing over death. You will think me a great chat- 
terbox/’ she added, with a smile. 

Madame,” said Godefroid, “ I could beg you to talk for 
ever, for I never heard a voice to compare with yours — it is 
music ! Rubini is not more delightful ” 

“ Do not mention Rubini or the opera,” said the old man 
sadly. “ However rich we may be, it is impossible to give 
my daughter, who was a great musician, a pleasure to which 
she was devoted.” 

“I apologize,” said Godefroid. 

“ You will fall into our ways,” said the old man. 

“ This is your training,” said the invalid, smiling. “ When 
we have warned you several times by crying, 1 Lookout ! * 
you will know all the blindman’s-buff of our conversation ! ” 

Godefroid exchanged a swift glance with Monsieur Bernard, 
who, seeing tears in his new friend’s eyes, put his finger to 
his lip as a warning not to betray the heroic devotion he and 
the boy had shown for the past seven years. 

This devoted and unflagging imposture, proved by the in- 
valid’s entire deception, produced on Godefroid at this mo- 
ment the effect of looking at a precipitous rock whence two 
chamois-hunters were on the point of falling. 

The splendid gold and diamond snuff-box with which the 
old man trifled, leaning over the foot of his daughter’s bed, 
was the same touch of genius which in a great actor wrings 
from us a cry of admiration. Godefroid looked at the snuff- 
box, wondering why it had not been sold or pawned, but he 
postponed the idea till he could discuss it with the old man. 

“This evening, Monsieur Godefroid, my daughter was so 
greatly excited by the promise of your visit, that the various 
strange symptoms of her malady which, for nearly a fortnight 
past, have driven us to despair, suddenly disappeared. You 
may imagine my gratitude ! ” 

“And mine ! ” cried Vanda, in an insinuating voice, with 
a graceful inclination of her head. “You are a deputation 
12 


178 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY, 


from the outer world. Since I was twenty I have not known 
what a drawing-room is like, or a party, or a ball ; and I love 
dancing, I am crazy about the play, and, above all, about 
music. Well, I imagine everything in my muJ. I read a 
great deal, and my father tells me all about the gay world and 
its doings ” 

As he listened, Godefroid felt prompted to kneel at the feet 
of this poor old man. 

“ When he goes to the opera — and he often goes — he de- 
scribes the dresses to me and all the singers. Oh ! I should 
like to be well again ; in the first place, for my father’s sake, 
for he lives for me alone, as I live for him and through him, 
and then for my son’s — I should like him to know another 
mother. Oh ! monsieur, what perfect men are my dear old 
father and my admirable son ! Then, I could wish for health 
also, that I might hear Lablache, Rubini, Tamburini, Grisi, 
the 1 Puritani * too ! But ” 

“ Come, my dear, compose yourself. If we talk about music, 
it is fatal ! ” said the old father, with a smile. 

And that smile, which made him look younger, evidently 
constantly deceived the sick woman. 

“ Well, I will be good,” said Vanda, with a saucy pout. 
“ But let me have a melodeon.” 

This instrument had lately been invented ; it could, by a 
little contrivance, be placed by the invalid’s bed, and would 
only need the pressure of the foot to give out an organ-like 
tone. This instrument, in its most improved form, was as 
effective as a piano ; but at that time it cost three hundred 
francs. Vanda, who read newspapers and reviews, had heard 
of such an instrument, and had been longing for one for two 
months past. 

“Yes, madame, and I can procure you one,” replied Gode- 
froid at an appealing glance from the old man. “A friend 
of mine who is setting out for Algiers has a very fine one, 
which I will borrow of him ; for before buying one, you had 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


179 


better try it. It is quite possible that the sound, which is 
strongly vibrating, may be too much for you.” 

“Can I have it to-morrow?” she asked with the eagerness 
of a creole. 

“To-morrow!” objected Monsieur Bernard. “That is 
very soon; beside, to-morrow will be Sunday.” 

“To be sure,” said she, looking at Godefroid, who felt as 
though he saw a soul fluttering as he admired the ubiquity of 
Vanda’s eyes. 

Until now he had never understood what the power of the 
voice and eyes might be when the entire vitality was concen- 
trated in them. Her glance was more than a glance ; it was 
a flame, or, rather, a blaze of divine light, a communicative 
ray of life and intelligence, thought made visible. The voice, 
with its endless intonations, supplied the place of movement, 
gesture, and turns of the head. And her changing color, 
varying like that of the fabled chameleon, made the illusion — 
or, if you will, the delusion — complete. That weary head, 
buried in a cambric pillow frilled with lace, was a complete 
woman. 

Never in his life had Godefroid seen so noble a spectacle, 
and he could hardly endure his emotions. Another grand 
feature, where everything was strange in a situation so full of 
romance and of horror, was that the soul alone seemed to be 
living in the spectators. This atmosphere, where all was sen- 
timent, had a celestial influence. They were as unconscious 
of their bodies as the woman in bed ; everything was pure 
spirit. By dint of gazing at these frail remains of a pretty 
woman, Godefroid forgot the elegant luxury of the room, and 
felt himself in heaven. It was not till half-an-hour after that 
he noticed a whatnot covered with curiosities, over which 
hung a noble portrait that Vanda desired him to look it, as it 
was by Gericault. 

“Gericault,” said she, “was a native of Rouen, and his 
family being under some obligations to my father, who was 


180 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. * 


president of the supreme court there, he showed his gratitude 
by painting that masterpiece, in which you see me at the age 
of sixteen.” 

“ You have there a very fine picture,” said Godefroid, “and 
one that is quite unknown to those who have studied the rare 
works of that great genius.” 

“To me it is no longer an object of anything but affec- 
tionate regard,” said she, “since I live only by my feelings; 
and I have a beautiful life,” she went on, looking at her father 
with her whole soul in her eyes. “ Oh, monsieur, if you could 
but know what my father is ! Who would believe that the 
austere and dignified judge to whom the Emperor owed so 
much that he gave him that snuff-box, and whom Charles X. 
rewarded by the gift of that Sevres tray” — and she looked at 
a side-table — “ that the stanch upholder of law and authority, 
the learned political writer, has in a heart of rock all the ten- 
derness of a mother ! Oh, papa, papa ! Come, kiss me — I 
insist on it — if you love me.” 

The old man rose, leaned over the bed, and set a kiss on 
his daughter’s high poetic brow, for her sickly fancies were 
not invariably furies of affection. Then he walked up and 
down the room, but without a sound, for he wore slippers — 
the work of his daughter’s hands. 

“ And what is your occupation ? ” she asked Godefroid after 
a pause. 

“ Madame, I am employed by certain pious persons to take 
help to the unfortunate. ” 

“ A beautiful mission ! ” said she. “ Do you know that the 
idea of devoting myself to such work has often occurred to 
me? But what ideas have not occurred to me?” said she, 
with a little shake of her head. “ Pain is a torch that throws 
light on life, and if I ever recover my health ” 

“You shall enjoy yourself, my child,” the old man put in. 

“ Certainly I long to enjoy life,” said she, “but should I be 
able for it ? My soir, I hope, will be a lawyer, worthy of his 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


181 


two grandfathers, and he must leave me. What is to be done? 
If God restores me to life, I will dedicate it to Him. Oh, 
not till I have given you both as much of it as you desire ! ” 
she exclaimed, looking at her father and her boy. “ There 
are times, my dear father, when Monsieur de Maistre’s ideas 
work in my brain, and I fancy I am expiating some sin.” 

“ That is what comes of so much reading ! ” cried the old 
man, visibly grieved. 

“ There was that brave Polish general, my great-grand- 
father ; he meddled very innocently in the concerns of 
Poland ” 

“ Now we have come back to Poland ! ” exclaimed Bernard. 

“How can I help it, papa? My sufferings are intolerable, 
they make me hate life and disgust me with myself. Well, 
what have I done to deserve them ? Such an illness is not 
merely disordered health ; it is a complete wreck of the whole 
constitution, and ” 

“ Sing the national air your poor mother used to sing ; it 
will please Monsieur Godefroid, I have spoken to him of your 
voice,” said her father, evidently quite anxious to divert his 
daughter’s mind from the ideas she was following out. 

* Vanda began to sing in a low, soft voice a hymn in the 
Polish tongue, which left Godefroid bewildered with admira- 
tion and sadness. This melody, a good deal like the long- 
drawn melancholy tunes of Brittany, is one of those poetic 
airs that linger in the mind long after being heard. As he 
listened to Vanda, Godefroid at first looked at her; but he 
could not bear the ecstatic eyes of this remnant of a woman, 
now half-crazed, and he gazed at some tassels that hung on 
each side of the top of the bed. 

“Ah, ha!” said Vanda, laughing at Godefroid’s evident 
curiosity, “ you are wondering what those are for?” 

“Vanda, Vanda, be calm, my child! See, here comes the 
tea. This, monsieur, is a very expensive contrivance,” he 
said to Godefroid. “ My daughter cannot raise herself, nor 


182 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY , . 


can she remain in bed without its being made and the sheets 
changed. Those cords work over pulleys, and by slipping a 
sheet of leather under her and attaching it by rings at the 
corners to those ropes, we can lift her without fatiguing her 
or ourselves.” 

“ Yes, I am carried up — up ! ” said Vanda deliriously. 

Auguste happily came in with a teapot, which he set on a 
little table, where he also placed the Sevres tray, covered with 
sandwiches and cakes. Then he brought in the cream and 
butter. This diverted the sick woman’s mind ; she had been 
on the verge of an attack. 

“ Here, Vanda, is Nathan’s last novel. If you should lie 
awake to-night, you will have something to read.” 

“ 4 La Perle de Dol ! ’ — The Pearl of Deceit. That will be 
a love-story no doubt. Auguste, what do you think? I am 
to have a melodeon ! ” 

Auguste raised his head quickly, and looked strangely at 
his grandfather. 

“ You see how fond he is of his mother ! ” Vanda went on. 
“ Come and kiss me, dear rogue. No, it is not your grand- 
father that you must thank, but Monsieur Godefroid ; our 
kind neighbor promises to borrow one for me to-morrow 
morning. What is it like, monsieur?” 

Godefroid, at a nod from the old man, gave a long descrip- 
tion of the melodeon while enjoying the tea Auguste had 
made, which was of superior quality and delicious flavor. 

At about half-past ten the visitor withdrew, quite over- 
powered by the frantic struggle maintained by the father and 
son, while admiring their heroism and the patience that 
enabled them, day after day, to play two equally exhausting 
parts. 

“Now,” said Monsieur Bernard, accompanying him to his 
own door, “ now you know the life I lead ! At every hour I 
have to endure the alarms of a robber, on the alert for every- 
thing. One word, one look might kill my daughter. One 


The seamy side of history. 


183 


toy removed from those she is accustomed to see about her 
would reveal everything to her, for mind sees through walls.” 

“Monsieur,” said Godefroid, “on Monday Halpersohn 
will pronounce his opinion on your daughter, for he is at 
home again. I doubt whether science can restore her frame.” 

“Oh, I do not count upon it,” said the old man with a 
sigh. “ If they will only make her life endurable. I trusted 
to your tact, monsieur, and I want to thank you, for you un- 
derstood. Ah ! the attack has come on ! ” cried he, hearing a 
scream. “ She has done too much ” 

He pressed Godefroid’s hand and hurried away. 

At eight next morning Godefroid knocked at the famous 
doctor’s door. He was shown up by the servant to a room 
on the second floor of the house, which he had had time to 
examine while the porter found the manservant. 

Happily, Godefroid’s punctuality had saved him the vexa- 
tion of waiting, as he had hoped it might. He was evidently 
the first-comer. He was led through a very plain anteroom 
into a large study, where he found an old man in a dressing- 
gown, smoking a long pipe. The dressing-gown, of black 
moreen, was shiny with wear, and dated from the time of the 
Polish dispersion. 

“What can I do to serve you?” said the Jew, “for you 
are not ill.” 

And he fixed Godefroid with a look that had all the sharp 
inquisitiveness of the Polish Jew, eyes which seemed to have 
ears. 

To Godefroid’s great surprise, Halpersohn was a man of 
fifty-six, with short bow-legs and a broad, powerful frame. 
There was an Oriental stamp about the man, and his face 
must in youth have been singularly handsome; the remains 
showed a markedly Jewish nose, as long and as curved as a 
Damascus scimitar. His forehead was truly Polish, broad 
and lofty, wrinkled all over like crumpled paper, and recall 


184 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


ing that of a Saint-Joseph by some old Italian master. His 
eyes were sea-green, set like a parrot’s in puckered gray lids, 
and expressive of cunning and avarice in the highest degree. 
His mouth, thin and straight, like a cut in his face, lent this 
sinister countenance a crowning touch of suspiciousness. 

The pale, lean features — for Halpersohn was extraordinarily 
thin — were crowned by ill-kept gray hair, and graced by a 
very thick, long beard, black streaked with white, that hid 
half his face, so that only the forehead and eyes, the cheek- 
bones, nose, and lips were visible. 

This man, a friend of the agitator Lelewel, wore a black 
velvet cap that came down in a point on his forehead and 
showed off its mellow hue, worthy of Rembrandt’s brush. 

The doctor, who subsequently became equally famous for 
his talents and his avarice, startled Godefroid by his question, 
and the young man asked himself: 4 ‘Can he take me fora 
thief?” 

The reply to the question was evident on the doctor’s table 
and chimney-piece. Godefroid had fancied himself the first- 
comer — he was the last. His patients had laid very handsome 
sums on the table and shelf, for Godefroid saw piles of twenty 
and forty-franc pieces and two thousand-franc notes. Was all 
this the fruit of a single morning ? He greatly doubted it, 
and he suspected an ingenious trick. The infallible but 
money-loving doctor perhaps tried thus to encourage his 
patients’ liberality, and to make his rich clients believe that 
he was given bank-notes as if they were curl-papers. 

Moise Halpersohn was no doubt largely paid, for he cured 
his patients, and cured them of those very complaints which 
the profession gave up in despair. It is very little known in 
Western Europe that the Slav nations possess a store of medical 
secrets. They have a number of sovereign remedies derived 
from their intercourse with the Chinese, the Persians, the 
Cossacks, the Turks, and the Tartars. Some peasant women, 
regarded as witches, have been known to completely cure 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


185 


hydrophobia in Poland with the juice of certain plants. 
There is among those nations a great mass of uncodified in- 
formation as to the effects of certain herbs and the powdered 
bark of trees, which is handed down from family to family, 
and miraculous cures are effected thereby. 

Halpersohn, who for five or six years was regarded as a 
charlatan, with his powders and mixtures, had the innate in- 
stinct of a great healer. Not only was he learned, he had 
observed with great care, and had traveled all over Germany, 
Russia, Persia, and Turkey, where he had picked up much 
traditional lore ; and as he was learned in chemistry, he be- 
came a living encyclopedia of the secrets preserved by “the 
good women,” as they were called, the midwives and “wise 
women ” of every country whither he had followed his father, 
a wandering trader. 

It must not be supposed that the scene in “ Richard in 
Palestine,” in which Saladin cures the King of England, is 
pure fiction. Halpersohn has a little silk bag, which he soaks 
in water till it is faintly colored, and certain fevers yield to 
this infusion taken by the patient. The virtues residing in 
plants are infinitely various, according to him, and the most 
terrible maladies admit of cure. He, however, like his 
brother physicians, pauses sometimes before the incomprehen- 
sible. Halpersohn admires the invention of Homoeopathy, 
less for its medical system than for its therapeutics ; he was 
at that time in correspondence with Hedenius of Dresden, 
Chelius of Heidelberg, and the other famous Germans, but 
keeping his own hand dark though it was full of discoveries. 
He would have no pupils. 

The setting of this figure, which might have stepped out of 
a picture by Rembrandt, was quite in harmony with it. The 
study, hung with green flock paper, was poorly furnished 
with a green divan. The carpet, also of moss green, showed 
the thread. A large armchair covered with black leather, for 
the patients, stood near the window, which was hung with 


186 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


green curtains. The doctor’s seat was a study-chair with 
arms, in the Roman style, of mahogany with a green leather 
seat. Beside the mantel and the long table at which he 
wrote, there was in the middle of the wall opposite the fire- 
place a common iron chest supporting a clock of Vienna 
granite, on which stood a bronze group of Love sporting w’ith 
Death, the gift of a famous German sculptor whom Halper- 
sohn had, no doubt, cured. A tazza between two candle- 
sticks was all the ornament of the mantel. Two bracket 
shelves, one at each end of the divan, served to place trays 
on, and Godefroid noted that there were silver bowls on 
them, water-bottles, and table-napkins. 

This simplicity, verging on bareness, struck Godefroid, who 
took everything in at a glance* and he recovered his presence 
of mind. 

“ I am perfectly well, monsieur. I have not come to con- 
sult you myself, but on behalf of a lady whom you ought long 
since to have seen — a lady living on the Boulevard du Mont- 
parnasse.” 

“ Oh, yes, that lady has sent her son to me several times. 
Well, monsieur, tell her to come to see me.” 

“ Tell her to come ! ” cried Godefroid indignantly. “ Why, 
monsieur, she cannot be lifted from her bed to a sofa; she has 
to be raised by straps.” 

“You are not a doctor?” asked the Jew, with a singular 
grimace which made his face look even more wicked. 

“ If Baron de Nucingen sent to tell you that he was ill 
and to ask you to visit him, would you reply, ‘ Tell him to 
come to me?”’ 

“ I should go to him,” said the Jew drily, as he spat into a 
Dutch spittoon of mahogany filled with sand. 

“You would go to him,” Godefroid said mildly, “because 
the baron has two millions a year, and ” 

“Nothing else has to do with the matter, I should go.” 

“ Very well, monsieur, you may come and see the lady on 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


187 


the Boulevard du Mont-Parnasse for the same reason. Though 
I have not such a fortune as the Baron de Nucingen, I am here 
to tell you that you can name your own price for the cure, or, 
if you fail, for your care of her. I am prepared to pay you in 
advance. But how is it, monsieur, that you, a Polish exile, a 
communist, I believe, will make no sacrifice for the sake of 
Poland ! For this lady is the granddaughter of General Tar- 
lovski, Prince Poniatowski’s friend ” 

“ Monsieur, you came to ask me to prescribe for this lady, 
and not to give me your advice. In Poland I am a Pole ; in 
Paris a Parisian. Every one does good in his own way, and 
you may believe me when I tell you that the greed attributed 
to me has its good reasons. The money I accumulate has its 
uses; it is sacred. I sell health ; rich persons can pay for it, 
and I make them buy it. The poor have their physicians. If 
I had no aim in view, I should not practice medicine. I live 
soberly, and I spend my time in rushing from one to another ; 
I am by nature lazy, and I used to be a gambler. You may 
draw your own conclusions, young man ! You are not old 
enough to judge the aged ! ” 

Godefroid kept silence. 

“ You live with the granddaughter of the foolhardy soldier 
who had no courage but for fighting, and who betrayed his 
country to Catherine II.?” 

“ Yes, monsieur.” 

4 4 Then be at home on Monday at three o’clock,” said he, 
laying down his pipe and taking up his note-book, in which he 
wrote a few words. “When I call you will please to pay me 
two hundred francs ; then, if I undertake to cure her, you will 
give me a thousand crowns. I have been told,” he went 
on, “ that the lady is shrunken as if she had fallen in the 
fire.” 

“It is a case, monsieur, if you will believe the first physi- 
cians of Paris, of nervous disease, with symptoms so strange 
that no one can imagine them who has not seen them.” 


188 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTOR K 


“ Ah, yes, now I remember the details given me by that 
little fellow. Till to-morrow, monsieur.” 

Godefroid left with a bow to this singular and extraordinary 
man. There was nothing about him to show or suggest a 
medical man, not even in that bare consulting-room, where 
the only article of furniture that was at all remarkable was 
the ponderous chest, made by Huret or Fichet. 

Godefroid reached the Passage Vivienne in time to purchase 
a splendid melodeon before the store was closed, and he 
dispatched it forthwith to Monsieur Bernard, whose address 
he gave. 

Then he went to the Rue Chanoinesse, passing along the 
Quai des Augustins, where he hoped still to find a bookseller’s 
store open ; he was, in fact, so fortunate, and had a long con- 
versation on the prime cost of law-books, with the young 
clerk in charge. 

He found Madame de la Chanterie and her friends just 
come in from high mass, and he answered her first inquiring 
glance with a significant shake. 

“And our dear Father Alain is not with you? ” said he. 

“He will not be here this Sunday,” replied Madame de la 
Chanterie. “You will not find him here till this day week, 
unless you go to the place where you know you can meet 
him.” 

“ Madame,” said Godefroid, in an undertone, “ you know 
I am less afraid of him than of these gentlemen, and I 
intended to confess to him.” 

“And I?” 

“ Oh, you — I will tell you everything, for I have many 
things to say to you. As a beginning, I have come upon the 
most extraordinary case of destitution, the strangest union of 
poverty and luxury, and figures of a sublimity which outdoes 
the inventions of our most admired romancers.” 

“ Nature, and especially moral nature, is always as far above 
art as God is above His creatures. But come,” said Madame 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


189 


de la Chanterie, “and tell me all about your expedition into 
the unknown lands where you made your first venture.” 

Monsieur Nicolas and Monsieur Joseph — for the Abb6 de 
Veze had remained for a few minutes at Notre-Dame — left 
Madame de la Chanterie alone with Godefroid ; and he, fresh 
from the emotions he had gone through the day before, related 
every detail with the intensity, the gesticulation, and the 
eagerness that come of the first impression produced by such 
a scene and its accessories of men and things. He had a 
success too ; for Madame de la Chanterie, calm and gentle as 
she was, and accustomed to look into gulfs of suffering, shed 
tears. 

“ You did right,” said she, “ to send the melodeon.” 

“ I wish I could have done much more,” replied Godefroid, 
“ since this is the first family through whom I have known the 
pleasures of charity ; I want to secure to this noble old man 
the chief part of the profits on his great work. I do not 
know whether you have enough confidence in me to enable 
me to undertake such a business. From the information I 
have gained, it would cost about nine thousand francs to bring 
out an edition of fifteen hundred copies, and their lowest 
selling value would be twenty-four thousand francs. As we 
must, in the first instance, pay off the three thousand and 
odd francs that have been advanced on the manuscript, we 
should have to risk twelve thousand francs. 

“ Oh, madame ! if you could but imagine how bitterly, as 
I made my way hither from the Quai des Augustins, I rued 
having so foolishly wasted my little fortune. The Genius of 
Charity appeared to me, as it were, and filled me with the 
ardor of a neophyte ; I desire to renounce the world, to live 
the life of these gentlemen, and to be worthy of you. Many 
a time during the past two days have I blessed the chance 
that brought me to your house. I will obey you in every 
particular till you judge me worthy to join the brotherhood.” 

“Well,” said Madame de la Chanterie very seriously, after 


190 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


a few minutes of reflection, “listen to me, I have important 
things to say to you. You have been fascinated, my dear 
boy, by the poetry of misfortune. Yes, misfortune often has 
a poetry of its own ; for, to me, poetry is a certain exaltation 
of feeling, and suffering is feeling. We live so much through 
suffering ! ” 

“Yes, madame, I was captured by the demon of curiosity. 
How could I help it ! I have not yet acquired the habit of 
seeing into the heart of these unfortunate lives, and I cannot 
set out with the calm resolution of your three pious soldiers of 
the Lord. But I may tell you, it was not till I had quelled 
this incitement that I devoted myself to your work." 

“ Listen, my very dear son,” said Madame de la Chanterie, 
saying the words with a saintly sweetness which deeply touched 
Godefroid, “we have forbidden ourselves absolutely — and 
this is no exaggeration, for we do not allow ourselves even to 
think of what is forbidden — we have forbidden ourselves ever 
to embark in a speculation. To print a book for sale, and 
looking for a return, is business, and any transaction of that 
kind would involve us in the difficulties of trade. To be 
sure, it looks in this case very feasible, and even necessary. 
Do you suppose that it is the first instance of the kind that 
has come before us? Twenty times, a hundred times, we have 
seen how a family, a concern, could be saved. But, then, 
what should we have become in undertaking matters of this 
kind? We should be simply a trading firm. To be a sleep- 
ing partner with the unfortunate is not work ; it is only help- 
ing misfortune to work. In a few days you may meet with 
even harder cases than this; will you do the same thing? 
You would be overwhelmed. 

“Remember, for one thing, that the house of Mongenod, 
for a year past, has ceased to keep our accounts. Quite half 
of your time will be taken up by keeping our books. There 
are, at this time, nearly two thousand persons in our debt in 
Paris ; and of those who may repay us, at any rate, it is neces- 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


191 


sary that we should check the amounts they owe us. We 
never sue — we wait. We calculate that half of the money 
given out is utterly lost. The other half sometimes returns 
doubled. 

* ‘Now, suppose this lawyer were to die, the twelve thou- 
sand francs would be badly invested ! But if his daughter 
recovers, if his grandson does well, if he one day gets another 
appointment — then, if he has any sense of honor, he will re- 
member the debt, and return the funds of the poor with 
interest. Do you know that more than one family, raised 
from poverty and started by us on the road to fortune by 
considerable loans without interest, has saved for the poor 
and returned us sums of double and, sometimes, treble the 
amount ? 

“This is our only form of speculation. 

“In the first place, as to this case which interests you, 
and ought to interest you, consider that the sale of the lawyer’s 
book depends on its merits; have you read it? Then, even 
if the work is excellent, how many excellent books have re- 
mained two or three years without achieving the success they 
deserved. How many a wreath is laid on a tomb ! And, as 
I know, publishers have ways of driving bargains and taking 
their charges, which make the business one of the most risky 
and the most difficult to disentangle of all in Paris. Monsieur 
Nicolas, can tell you about these difficulties, inherent in the 
nature of book-making. So, you see, we are prudent ; we 
have ample experience of every kind of misery, as of every 
branch of trade, for we have been long studying Paris. The 
Mongenods give us much help ; they are a light to our path, 
and through them we know that the Bank of France is always 
suspicious of the book-trade, though it is a noble trade — but 
it is badly conducted. 

“ As to the four thousand francs needed to save this noble 
family from the horrors of indigence, I will give you the 
money ; for the poor boy and his grandfather must be fed 


i92 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY . 


and decently dressed. There are sorrows, miseries, wounds, 
which we bind up at once without inquiring whom it is that we 
are helping ; religion, honor, character, are not inquired into; 
but as soon as it is a case of lending the money belonging to 
the poor to assist the unfortunate under the more active form 
of industry or trade, then we require some guarantee, and are 
as rigid as the money-lenders. So, for all beyond this imme- 
diate relief, be satisfied with finding the most honest publisher 
for the old man’s book. This is a matter for Monsieur Nicolas. 
He is acquainted with lawyers and professors and authors of 
works on jurisprudence ; next Saturday he will, no doubt, be 
prepared with some good advice for you. 

“ Be easy ; the difficulty will be surmounted if possible. At 
the same time, it might be well if Monsieur Nocolas could 
read the magistrate’s book; if you can persuade him to 
lend it.” 

Godefroid was amazed a*t this woman’s sound sense, for he 
had believed her to be animated solely by the spirit of charity. 
He knelt on one knee and kissed one of her beautiful hands, 
saying — 

“ Then you are Reason, too ! ” 

“ In our work we have to be everything,” said she, with the 
peculiar cheerfulness of a true saint. 

There was a brief silence, broken by Godefroid, who ex- 
claimed — 

“Two thousand debtors, did you say, madame ? Two 
thousand accounts ! It is tremendous ! ” 

“Two thousand accounts, which may lead, as I have told 
you, to our being repaid from the delicate honor of the bor- 
rowers. But there are three thousand more — families who 
will never make us any return but in thanks. Thus, as I have 
told you, we feel that it is necessary to keep books ; and if 
your secrecy is above suspicion, you will be our financial 
oracle. We ought to keep a day-book, a ledger, a book of 
current expenses, and a cash-book. Of course, we have re- 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


193 


ccipts, notes of hand, but it takes a great deal of time to look 

for them Here come the gentlemen.” 

Godefroid, at first serious and thoughtful, took little part in 
the conversation ; he was bewildered by the revelation Mad- 
ame de la Chanterie had just imparted to him in a way which 
showed that she meant it to be the reward of his zeal. 

“ Two thousand families indebted to us ! ” said he to him- 
self. “Why, if they all cost as much as Monsieur Bernard 
will cost us, we must have millions sown broadcast in Paris ! ” 
This reflection was one of the last promptings of the worldly 
spirit which was fast dying out in Godefroid. As he thought 
the matter over, he understood that the united fortunes of 
Madame de la Chanterie, of Messieurs Alain, Nicolas, Joseph, 
and Judge Popinot, with the gifts collected by the Abbe de 
Veze, and the loans from the Mongenods, must have produced 
a considerable capital ; also, that in twelve or fifteen years this 
capital, with the interest paid on it by those who had shown 
their gratitude, must have increased like a snowball, since the 
charitable holders took nothing from it. By degrees he began 
to see clearly how the immense affair was managed, and his 
wish to cooperate was increased. 

At nine o’clock he was about to return on foot to the 
Boulevard du Mont-Parnasse ; but Madame de la Chanterie, 
distrustful of so lonely a neighborhood, insisted on his taking 
a cab. As he got out of the vehicle, though the shutters were 
so closely fastened that not a gleam of light was visible, Gode- 
froid heard the sound of the instrument ; and Auguste, who, 
no doubt, was watching for Godefroid’s return, half opened 
the door on the landing, and said — 

“ Mamma would very much like to see you, and my grand- 
father begs you will take a cup of tea.” 

Godefroid went in and found the invalid transfigured by the 
pleasure of the music ; her face beamed and her eyes sparkled 
like diamonds. 

13 


194 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


“I ought to have waited for you, to let you hear the first 
chords ; but I flew at this little organ as a hungry man rushes 
on a banquet. But you have a soul to understand me, and I 
know I am forgiven.” 

Vanda made a sign to her son, who placed himself where 
he could press the pedal that supplied the interior of the in- 
strument with wind ; and, with her eyes raised to heaven like 
Saint Cecilia, the invalid, whose hands had for a time recov- 
ered their strength and agility, performed some variations on 
the prayer in “ Mose”* which her son had bought for her. 
She had composed them in a few hours. Godefroid discerned 
in her a talent identical with that of Chopin. It was a soul 
manifesting itself by divine sounds in which sweet melancholy 
predominated. 

Monsieur Bernard greeted Godefroid with a look expressing 
a sentiment long since in abeyance. If the tears had not been 
for ever dried up in the old man scorched by so many fierce 
sorrows, his eyes would at this moment have been wet. 

The old lawyer was fingering his snuff-box and gazing at his 
daughter with unutterable rapture. 

“To-morrow, madame,” said Godefroid, when the music 
had ceased, “your fate will be sealed, for I have good news 
for you. The famous Halpersohn will come at three o’clock. 
And he has promised,” he added in Monsieur Bernard’s ear, 
“ to tell me the truth.” 

The old man rose, and taking Godefroid by the hand, led 
him into a corner of the room near the fireplace. He was 
trembling. 

“ What a night lies before me ! It is the final sentence ! ” 
said he in a whisper. “ My daughter will be cured or con- 
demned ! ” 

“ Take courage,” said Godefroid, “and after tea come to 
my rooms ! ” 

“ Cease playing, my child,” said Monsieur Bernard ; “ you 
* Anglice : “ Moses in Egypt.” 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


195 


will bring on an attack. Such an expenditure of strength will 
be followed by a reaction.” 

He made Auguste remove the instrument, and brought his 
daughter her cup of tea with the coaxing ways of a nurse who 
wants to anticipate the impatience of a baby. 

“And what is this doctor like?” asked she, already diverted 
by the prospect of seeing a stranger. 

Vanda, like all prisoners, was consumed by curiosity. When 
the physical symptoms of her complaint gave her some respite, 
they seemed to develop in her mind, and then she had the 
strangest whims and violent caprices. She wanted to see 
Rossini, and cried because her father, who could, she imagined, 
do everything, assured her he could not bring him. 

Godefroid gave her a minute description of the Jewish 
physician and his consulting-room, for she knew nothing of 
the steps taken by her father. Monsieur Bernard had enjoined 
silence on his grandson as to his visits to Halpersohn; he had 
so much feared to excite hopes which might not be realized. 
Vanda seemed to hang on the words that fell from Godefroid’s 
lips ; she was spellbound and almost crazy, so ardent did her 
desire become to see the strange Pole. 

“ Poland has produced many singular and mysterious fig- 
ures,” said the old lawyer. “ Just now, for instance, beside 
this doctor there is Hoene Vronski, the mathematician and 
seer, Mickievicz, the poet, the inspired Tovianski, and Chopin 
with his superhuman talent. Great national agitations always 
produce these crippled giants.” 

“ Oh, my dear papa, what a man you are ! If you were to 
write down all that we hear you say simply to entertain me, 
you would make a fortune ! For, would you believe me, 
monsieur, my kind old father invents tales for me when I have 
no more novels to read, and so sends me to sleep. His voice 
lulls me, ana ne olien soothes my pain witn ms cleverness. 
Who will ever repay him ? Auguste, my dear boy, you ought 
to kiss your grandfather’s footprints for me.” 


196 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTOR Y. 


The youth looked at his mother with his fine eyes full of 
tears; and that look, overflowing with long-repressed com- 
passion, was a poem in itself. Godefroid rose, took Auguste’s 
hand, and pressed it warmly. 

“ God has given you two angels for your companions, 
madame ! ” he exclaimed. 

“ Indeed I know it. And I blame myself for so often pro- 
voking them. Come, dear Auguste, and kiss your mother. 
He is a son, monsieur, of whom any mother would be proud. 
He is as good as gold, candid — a soul without sin ; but a 
rather too impassioned creature, like his mamma. God has 
nailed me to my bed to preserve me, perhaps, from the follies 
women commit — when they have too much heart!” she 
ended with a smile. 

Godefroid smiled in reply and bowed good-night. 

“ Good-night, monsieur; and be sure to thank your friend, 
for he has made a poor cripple very happy.” 

‘‘Monsieur,” said Godefroid when he was in his rooms, 
alone with Monsieur Bernard, who had followed him, “I 
think I may promise, you that you shall not be robbed by 
those three sharpers. I can get the required sum, but you 
must place the papers proving the loan in my hands. If I 
am to do anything more, you should allow me to have your 
book — not to read myself, for I am not learned enough to 
judge of it, but to be read by an old lawyer I know, a man 
of unimpeachable integrity, who will undertake, according to 
the character of the work, to find a respectable firm with 
whom you may deal on equitable terms. On this, however, 
I do not insist. 

“Meanwhile, here are five hundred francs,” he went on, 
offering a note to the astonished lawyer, “ to supply your 
more pressing wants. I ask for no receipt ; you will be 
indebted on no evidence but that of your conscience, and 
your conscience may lie silent till you have to some extent re- 
covered yourself, I will settle with Halnersohn.” 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


197 


“ But who are you?” asked the old man, sinking on to a 
chair. 

“I,” replied Godefroid, “am nobody; but I serve certain 
powerful persons to whom your necessities are now made known, 
and who take an interest in you. Ask no more.” 

“And what motive can these persons have ?” 

“Religion, monsieur,” replied Godefroid. 

“Is it possible ? Religion ! ” 

“Yes, the Catholic, Apostolic, Roman religion.” 

“ Then you are of the Order of Jesus ? ” 

“No, monsieur,” said Godefroid. “Be perfectly easy. 
No one has any design on you beyond that of helping you 
and restoring your family to comfort.” 

“ Can philanthropy then wear any guise but that of 
vanity? ” 

“ Nay, monsieur, do not insult holy Catholic Love, the vir- 
tue described by Saint Paul ! ” cried Godefroid eagerly. 

At this reply Monsieur Bernard began to stride up and 
down the room. 

“I accept!” he suddenly said. “And I have but one 
way of showing my gratitude — that is, by intrusting you with 
my work. The notes and quotations are unnecessary to a 
lawyer ; and I have, as I told you, two months’ work before 
me yet in copying them out. To-morrow, then,” and he 
shook hands with Godefroid. 

“Can I have effected a conversion?” thought Godefroid, 
struck by the new expression he saw on the old man’s face 
as he had last spoken. 

Next day, at three o’clock, a hackney coach stopped at the 
door, and out of it stepped Halpersohn, buried in a vast bear- 
skin coat. The cold had increased in the course of the night, 
and the thermometer stood at ten degrees below freezing. 

The Jewish doctor narrowly though furtively examined the 
room in which his visitor of yesterday received him, and 
Godefroid detected a gleam of suspicion sparkling in his eye 


198 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


like the point of a dagger. This swift flash of doubt gave 
Godefroid an internal chill ; he began to think that this man 
would be merciless in his money dealings ; and it is so natural 
to think of genius as allied to goodness, that this gave him an 
impulse of disgust. 

“ Monsieur/’ said he, “ I perceive that the plainness of my 
lodgings arouses your uneasiness ; so you will not be surprised 
at my manner of proceeding. Here are your two hundred 
francs, and here, you see, are three notes for a thousand 
francs each” — and he drew out the notes which Madame de 
la Chanterie had given him to redeem Monsieur Bernard’s 
manuscript. “ If you have any further doubts as to my solv- 
ency, I may refer you, as a guarantee for the carrying out of 
my pledge, to Messrs. Mongenod, the bankers, Rue de la 
Victoire.” 

“I know them,” said Halpersohn, slipping the ten gold* 
pieces into his pocket. 

“ And he will go there ! ” thought Godefroid. 

“And where does the sick lady live?” asked the doctor, 
rising, as a man who knows the value of time. 

“ Come this way, monsieur,” said Godefroid, going first to 
show him the way. 

The Jew cast a shrewd and scrutinizing glance on the 
rooms he went through, for he had the eye of a spy ; and he 
was able to see the misery of poverty through the door into 
Monsieur Bernard’s bedroom, for, unluckily, Monsieur Ber- 
nard had just been putting on the dress in which he always 
showed himself to his daughter, and in his haste to admit his 
visitors he left the door of his kennel ajar. 

He bowed with dignity to Halpersohn, and softly opened 
his daughter’s bedroom door. 

“Vanda, my dear, here is the doctor,” he said. 

He stood aside to let Halpersohn pass, still wrapped in his 
furs. 

The Jew was surprised at the splendor of this room, which 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


199 


in this part of the town seemed anomalous; but his astonish- 
ment was of no long duration, for he had often seen in the 
houses of German and Polish Jews a similar discrepancy be- 
tween the display of extreme penury and concealed wealth. 
While walking from the door to the bed he never took his 
eyes off the sufferer ; and when he stood by her side, he said 
to her in Polish — 

“ Are you a Pole ? ” 

“ I am not ; my mother was.” 

“Whom did your grandfather, General Tarlovski, marry?” 

“A Pole.” 

“ Of what province ? ” 

“ A Sobolevska of Pinsk.” 

“ Good. And this gentleman is your father ? ” 

“Yes, monsieur.” 

“Monsieur,” said Halpersohn, “is your wife ” 

“She is dead,” replied Monsieur Bernard. 

“Was she excessively fair?” said Halpersohn, with some 
impatience at the interruption. 

“Here is a portrait of her,” replied Monsieur Bernard, 
taking down a handsome frame containing several good 
miniatures. 

Halpersohn was feeling the invalid’s head and hair, while 
he looked at the portrait of Vanda Tarlovski nee Comtesse 
Sobolevska. 

“Tell me the symptoms of the patient’s illness.” And he 
seated himself in the armchair, gazing steadily at Vanda dur- 
ing twenty minutes, while the father and daughter spoke by 
turns. 

“And how old is the lady?” 

“ Eight-and-thirty.” 

“ Very good ! ” he said as he rose. “ Well, I undertake to 
cure her. I cannot promise to give her the use of her legs, 
but she can be cured. Only, she must be placed in a private 
hospital in my part of the town.” 


200 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


“ But, monsieur, my daughter cannot be moved ” 

“ I will answer for her life,” said Halpersohn sententiously. 
“ But I answer for her only on those conditions. Do you 
know she will exchange her present symptoms for another hor- 
rible form of disease, which will last for a year perhaps, or six 
months at the very least? You can come to see her, as you 
are her father.” 

“And it is certain ? ” asked Monsieur Bernard. 

“ Certain,” repeated the Jew. “ You daughter has a vicious 
humor, a national disorder, in her blood, and it must be 
brought out. When you bring her, carry her to the Rue 
Basse-Saint-Pierre at Chaillot — Dr. Halpersohn’s private hos- 
pital.” 

“But how?” 

“ On a stretcher, as the sick people are always carried to a 
hospital.” 

“But it will kill her to be moved.” 

“No.” 

And Halpersohn, as he spoke this curt No, was at the door, 
where Godefroid met him on the landing. 

The Jew, who was suffocating with heat, said in his ear — 

“ The charge will be fifteen francs a day, beside the thousand 
crowns; three months paid in advance.” 

“Very good, monsieur.. And,” asked Godefroid, standing 
on the step of the cab into which the doctor had hurried, 
“you answer for the cure?” 

“Positively,” said the Pole. “Are you in love with the 
lady?” 

“No,” said Godefroid. 

“You must not repeat what I am about to tell you, for I 
am saying it only to prove to you that I am sure of the cure ; 
but if you say anything about it, you will be the death of the 
woman ” 

Godefroid replied only by a gesture. 

“ For seventeen years she has been suffering from the disease 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


201 


known as Plica Polonica, which can produce all these tor- 
ments ; I have seen the most dreadful cases. Now, I am the 
only man living who knows how to bring out the plica in such 
a form as to be curable, for not every one gets over it. You 
see, monsieur, that I am really very liberal. If this were some 
great lady — a Baronne de Nucingen or any other wife or 
daughter of some modern Croesus — I should get a hundred — 
two hundred thousand francs for this cure — whatever I might 
like to ask ! However, that is a minor misfortune.” 

“And moving her?” 

“ Oh, she will seem to be dying, but she will not die of it ! 
She may live a hundred years when once she is cured. Now, 
Jacques, quick — Rue Monsieur, and make haste ! ” said he to 
the driver. 

He left Godefroid standing in the street, where he gazed in 
bewilderment after the retreating cab. 

“Who on earth is that queer-looking man dressed in bear- 
skin ? ” asked Madame Vauthier, whom nothing could escape. 
“ Is it true, as the hackney coachman said, that he is the most 
famous doctor in Paris? ” 

“And what can that matter to you, Mother Vauthier? ” he 
asked. 

“ Oh, not at all,” said she with a sour face. 

“You made a great mistake in not siding with me,” said 
Godefroid, as he slowly went into the house. “You would 
have done better than by sticking to Monsieur Barbet and 
Monsieur Metivier; you will get nothing out of them.” 

“And am I on their side?” retorted she with a shrug. 
“ Monsieur Barbet is my landlord, that is all.” 

It took two days to persuade Monsieur Bernard to part from 
his daughter and carry her to Chaillot. Godefroid and the old 
lawyer walked all the way, one on each side of the stretcher, 
screened in with striped blue-and-white ticking, on which the 
precious patient lay, almost tied down to the mattress, so 
greatly did her father fear the convulsions of a nervous attack. 


202 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY , . 


However, having set out at three o’clock, the procession 
reached the private hospital at five, when it was dusk. Gode- 
froid paid the four hundred and fifty francs demanded for the 
three months’ board, and took a receipt for it ; then, when 
he went down to pay the two porters, Monsieur Bernard 
joined him and took from under the mattress a very volumi- 
nous sealed packet, which he handed to Godefroid. 

“ One of these men will fetch you a cab,” said he, “ for you 
cannot carry those four volumes very far. This is my book ; 
place it in my censor’s hands; I will leave it with him for a 
week. I shall remain at least a week in this neighborhood, 
for I cannot abandon my daughter to her fate. I know my 
grandson ; he can mind the house, especially with you to help 
him; and I commend him to your care. If I were myself 
what once I was, I would ask you my critic’s name; for if 
he was once a magistrate, there were few whom I did not 
know ” 

“It is no mystery,” said Godefroid, interrupting Monsieur 
Bernard. “Since you show such entire confidence in me, I 
may tell you that the reader is the President Lecamus de 
Tresnes.” 

“Oh, of the Supreme Court in Paris. Take it — by all 
means. He is one of the noblest men of our time. He and 
the late Judge Popinot, the judge of the lower court, were 
lawyers worthy of the best days of the old Parlements. All 
my fears, if I had any, must vanish. And where does he live ? 
I should like to go and thank him when he has taken so much 
trouble.” 

“You will find him in the Rue Chanoinesse, under the 
name of Monsieur Nicolas. I am just going there. But your 
agreement with those rascals?” 

“Auguste will give it you,” said the old man, going back 
into the hospital. 

A cab was found on the Quai de Billy and brought by one 
of the men ; Godefroid got in and stimulated the driver by 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY, 


203 


the promise of drink money if he drove quickly to the Rue 
Chanoinesse, where he intended to dine. 

Half an hour after Vanda’s removal, three men, dressed in 
black, were let in by Madame Vauthier at the door in the 
Rue Notre-Dame des Champs, where they had been waiting, 
no doubt, till the coast should be clear. They went upstairs 
under the guidance of the Judas in petticoats, and gently 
knocked at Monsieur Bernard’s door. As it happened to be 
a Thursday, the young collegian was at home. He opened 
the door, and three men slipped like shadows into the outer 
room. 

“ What do you want, gentlemen ?” asked the youth. 

“This is Monsieur Bernard’s — that is to say, Monsieur le 
Baron ?” 

“ But what do you want here?” 

“ Oh, you know that pretty well, young man, for your 
grandfather has just gone off with a closed litter, I am told. 
Well, that does not surprise us ; he shows his wisdom. I am 
a bailiff, and I have come to seize everything here. On Mon- 
day last you were summoned to pay three thousand francs and 
the expenses to Monsieur Metivier, under penalty of imprison- 
ment ; and as a man who has grown onions knows the smell 
of chives, the debtor has taken the key of the fields rather 
than wait for that of the lock-up. However, if we cannot 
secure him, we can get a wing or a leg of his gorgeous furni- 
ture — for we know all about it, young man, and we are going 
to make an official report.” 

“ Here are some stamped papers that your grandpapa would 
never take,” said the widow Vauthier, shoving three writs 
into Auguste’s hand. 

“Stay here, ma’am; we will put you in possession. The 
law gives you forty sous a day ; it is not to be sneezed at.” 

“ Ah, ha ! Then I shall see what there is in the grand bed- 
room! ” cried Madame Vauthier. 

U 


204 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


“ You shall not go into my mother’s room ! ” cried the lad 
in a fury, as he flung himself between the door and the three 
men in black. 

On a sign from their leader, the two men and a lawyer’s 
clerk who came in seized Auguste. 

“ No resistance, young man ; you are not master here. We 
shall draw up a charge, and you will spend the night in the 
lock-up.” 

At this dreadful threat, Auguste melted into tears. 

“ Oh, what a mercy,” cried he, “that mamma is gone! 
This would have killed her ! ” 

The men and the bailiff now held a sort of council with the 
widow Vauthier. Auguste understood, though they talked in 
a low voice, that what they chiefly wanted was to seize his 
grandfather’s precious manuscripts, so he opened the bedroom 
door. 

“Walk in then, gentlemen,” said he, “but spoil nothing. 
You will be paid to-morrow morning.” Then, still in tears, 
he went into his own squalid room, snatched up all his grand- 
father’s notes, and stuffed them into the stove, where he knew 
that there was not a spark of fire. 

The thing was done so promptly that the bailiff, though he 
was keen and cunning, and worthy of his employers Barbet 
and Metivier, found the boy in tears on a chair when he 
rushed into the room, having concluded that the manuscripts 
would not be in the anteroom. Though books and manu- 
scripts may not legally be seized for debt, the lien signed by 
the old lawyer in this case justified the proceeding. Still, it 
would have been easy to find means of delaying the distraint, 
as Monsieur Bernard would certainly have known. Hence 
the necessity for acting with cunning. 

The widow Vauthier had been an invaluable ally to her 
landlord by failing to serve his notices on her lodger ; her 
plan was to throw them on him when entering at the heels of 
the officers of justice ; or, if necessary, to declare to Monsieur 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


205 


Bernard that she had supposed them to be intended for the 
two writers who had been absent for two days. 

The inventory of the goods took above an hour to make 
out, for the bailiff would omit nothing, and regarded the 
value as sufficient to pay off the debts. 

As soon as the officers were gone, the poor youth took the 
writs and hurried away to find his grandfather at Halpersohn’s 
hospital ; for, as the bailiff assured him that Madame Vauthier 
was responsible for everything under heavy penalties, he could 
leave the place without fear. 

The idea of his grandfather being taken to prison for debt 
drove the poor boy absolutely mad — mad in the way in which 
the young are mad ; that is to say, a victim to the dangerous 
and fatal excitement in which every energy of youth is in a 
ferment and may lead to the worst as to the most heroic ac- 
tions. 

When poor Auguste reached the Rue Basse-Saint-Pierre, the 
doorkeeper told him that he did not know what had become 
of the father of the patient brought in at five o’clock, but that 
by Monsieur Halpersohn’s orders no one — not even her father 
— was to be allowed to see the lady for a week, or it might 
endanger her life. 

This reply put a climax to Auguste’s desperation. He went 
back again to the Boulevard du Mont-Parnasse, revolving the 
most extravagant schemes as he went. He got home by about 
half-past eight, almost starving, so exhausted by hunger and 
grief, that he accepted when Madame Vauthier invited him to 
share her supper, consisting of a stew of mutton and potatoes. 
The poor boy dropped half-dead into a chair in the dreadful 
woman’s room. 

Encouraged by the old woman’s coaxing and insinuating 
words, he answered a few cunningly arranged questions about 
Godefroid, and gave her to understand that it was he who would 
pay off his grandfather’s debts on the morrow, and that to 
him they owed the improvement that had taken place in their 


206 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


prospects during the past week. The widow listened to all 
this with an affectation of doubt, plying Auguste with a few 
glasses of wine. 

At ten o’clock the wheels of a cab were heard to stop in 
front of the house, and the woman exclaimed — 

“ Oh, there is Monsieur Godefroid ! ” 

Auguste took the key of his rooms and went upstairs to see 
the kind friend of the family ; but he found Godefroid so 
entirely unlike himself, that he hesitated to speak till the 
thought of his grandfather’s danger spurred the generous 
youth. 

This is what had happened in the Rue Chanoinesse, and 
had caused Godefroid’s stern expression of countenance. 

The neophyte, arriving in good time, had found Madame 
de la Chanterie and her adherents in the drawing-room, and 
he had taken Monsieur Nicolas aside to deliver to him the 
“ Spirit of the Modern Laws.” Monsieur Nicolas at once 
carried the sealed parcel to his room, and came down to 
dinner. Then, after chatting during the first part of the 
evening, he went up again, intending to begin reading the 
work. 

Godefroid was greatly surprised when, a few minutes after, 
Man on came from the old judge to beg him to go up to speak 
with him. Following Manon, he was led to Monsieur 
Nicolas’ room ; but he could pay no attention to its details, 
so greatly was he startled by the evident distress of a man 
usually so placid and firm. 

“ Did you know,” said Monsieur Nicolas, quite the judge 
again, “ the name of the author of this work? ” 

“ Monsieur Bernard,” said Godefroid. “ I know him only 
by that name. I did not open the parcel ” 

“True,” said Monsieur Nicolas. “I broke the seals 
myself. And you made no inquiry as to his previous 
history? ” 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


207 


“ No. I know that he married for love the daughter of 
General Tarlovski, that his daughter is named Vanda after her 
mother, and his grandson Auguste. And the portrait I saw 
of Monsieur Bernard is, I believe, in the dress of a presiding 
judge — a red gown.” 

“Look here!” said Monsieur Nicolas, and held out the 
title of the work in Auguste’s handwriting, and in the follow- 
ing form : 

THE SPIRIT 

OF THE MODERN LAWS 

BV 

M. BERNARD -JEAN- BAPTISTE MACLOUD 
BARON BOURLAC 

Formerly Attorney-General to the High Court of Justice at Rouen 
Commander of the Legion of Honor. 

" Oh ! The man who condemned madame, her daughter, 
and the Chevalier du Vissard ! ' said Godefroid in a choked 
voice. 

His knees gave way, and the neophyte dropped on to a 
chair. 

“ What a beginning ! ” he murmured. 

“ This, my dear Godefroid, is a business that comes home 
to us all. You have done your part ; we must deal with it 
now ! I beg you to do nothing further of any kind ; go and 
fetch whatever you left in your rooms; and not a word ! In 
fact, absolute silence. Tell Baron Bourlac to apply to me. 
Between this and then, we shall have decided how it will be 
best to act in such circumstances.” 

Godefroid went downstairs, called a hackney cab, and hur- 
ried back to the Boulevard du Mont-Parnasse, filled with hor- 
ror as he thought of the examination and trials of Caen, of 


208 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


the hideous drama that ended on the scaffold, and of Madame 
de la Chanterie’s sojourn in BicStre. He understood the 
neglect into which this lawyer, almost a second Fouquier- 
Tinville, had fallen in his old age, and the reasons why he so 
carefully concealed his name. 

“ I hope Monsieur Nicolas will take some terrible revenge 
for poor Madame de la Chanterie ! ” 

He had just thought out this not very Christian wish, when 
he saw Auguste. 

“What do you want of me?” asked Godefroid. 

“ My dear sir, a misfortune has befallen us which is turning 
my brain ! Some scoundrels have been here to take posses- 
sion of everything belonging to my mother, and they are 
hunting for my grandfather to put him into prison. But it is 
not by reason of these disasters that I turn to you for help,” 
said the lad with Roman pride ; “ it is to beg you to do me 
such a service as you, any one, would do to a condemned 
criminal ” 

“Speak,” said Godefroid. 

“ They wanted to get hold of my grandfather’s manuscripts; 
and as I believe he placed the work in your hands, I want to 
beg you to take the notes, for the woman will not allow me to 
remove a thing. Put them with the volumes, and then ” 

“Very well,” said Godefroid, “make haste and fetch 
them.” 

While the lad went off, to return immediately, Godefroid 
reflected that the poor boy was guilty of no crime, that he 
must not break his heart by telling him about his grandfather, 
or the desertion which was the punishment in his sad old age 
of the passions of his political career ; he took the packet not 
unkindly. 

“ What is your mother’s name ? ” he asked. 

“ My mother, monsieur, is the Baronne de Mergi. My 
father was the son of the presiding judge of the Supreme 
Court at Rouen.” 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


209 


“ Ah ! ” said Godefroid, “so your grandfather married his 
daughter to the son of the famous Judge Mergi?” 

“ Yes, monsieur.” 

“Leave me, my little friend,” said Godefroid. 

He went out on to the landing with the young Baron de 
Mergi, and called Madame Vauthier. 

“ Mother Vauthier,” said he, “ you can relet my rooms ; I 
am never coming back again.” 

And he went down to the cab. 

“ Have you intrusted anything to that gentleman ? ” asked 
the widow of Auguste. 

“ Yes,” said the lad. 

“You’re a pretty fool. He is one of your enemies’ agents. 
He has been at the bottom of it all, you may be sure. It is 
proof enough that the trick has turned out all right that he 
never means to come back. He told me I could let his 
rooms.” 

Auguste flew out, and down the boulevard, running after 
the cab, and at last succeeded in stopping it by his shouts 
and cries. 

“ What is it ? ” asked Godefroid. 

“ My grandfather’s manuscripts ! ” 

“Tell him to apply for them to Monsieur Nicolas.” 

The lad took this reply as the cruel jest of a thief who has 
no shame left ; he sat down in the snow as he saw the cab set 
off again at a brisk trot. 

He rose in a fever of fierce energy and went home to bed, 
worn out with rushing about Paris, and quite heart-broken. 

Next morning, Auguste de Mergi awoke to find himself 
alone in the rooms where yesterday his mother and his grand- 
father had been with him, and he went through all the miseries 
of his position, of which he fully understood the extent. The 
utter desertion of the place, hitherto so amply filled, where 
every minute had brought with it a duty and an occupation, 
was so painful to him, that he went down to ask the widow 
14 


210 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


Vauthier whether his grandfather had come in during the 
night or early morning ; for he himself had slept very late, 
and he supposed that if the Baron Bourlac had come home 
the woman would have warned him against his pursuers. 
She replied, with a sneer, that he must know full well where 
to look for his grandfather ; for if he had not come in, it was 
evident that he had taken up his abode in the “ Chateau de 
Clichy.” This impudent irony from the woman who, the 
day before, had cajoled him so effectually, again drove the 
poor boy to frenzy, and he flew to the private hospital in 
the Rue Basse-Saint-Pierre, in despair, as he thought of his 
grandfather in prison. 

Baron Bourlac had hung about all night in front of the 
hospital which he was forbidden to enter, or close to the house 
of Doctor Halpersohn, whom he naturally wished to call to 
account for this conduct. The doctor did not get home till 
two in the morning. The old man, who, at half-past one, had 
been at the doctor’s door, had just gone off to walk in the 
Champs-Elys£es, and when he returned at half-past two the 
gatekeeper told him that Monsieur Halpersohn was now in 
bed and asleep, and was on no account to be disturbed. 

Here, alone, at half-past two in the morning, the unhappy 
father, in utter despair, paced the quay, and under the trees 
loaded with frost, of the sidewalks of the Cours-la-Reine, wait- 
ing for the day. 

At nine o’clock he presented himself at the doctor’s, and 
asked him why he thus kept his daughter under lock and key. 

“ Monsieur,” said Halpersohn, “I yesterday made myself 
answerable for your daughter’s recovery ; and at this moment 
I am responsible for her life, and you must understand that in 
such a case I must have sovereign authority. I may tell you 
that your daughter yesterday took a remedy which will bring 
out the plica , that till the disease is brought out the lady 
must remain invisible. I will not allow myself to lose my 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


211 


patient or you to lose your daughter by exposing her to any 
excitement, any error of treatment; if you really insist on 
seeing her, I shall demand a consultation of three medical 
men to protect myself against any responsibility, as the patient 
might die.” 

The old man, exhausted with fatigue, had dropped on to a 
chair ; he quickly rose, however, saying — 

“ Forgive me, monsieur; I have spent the night in mortal 
anguish, for you cannot imagine how much I love my daugh- 
ter, whom I have nursed for fifteen years between life and 
death, and this week of waiting is torture to me.” 

The baron left Halpersohn’s study, tottering like a drunken 
man, the doctor giving him his arm to the top of the stairs. 

About an hour later, he saw Auguste de Mergi walk into his 
room. On questioning the lodge-keeper of the private hos- 
pital, the poor lad had just heard that the father of the lady 
admitted the day before had called again in the evening, had 
asked for her, and had spoken of going early in the day to 
Doctor Halpersohn, who, no doubt, would know something 
about him. At the moment when Auguste de Mergi appeared 
in the doctor’s room, Halpersohn was breakfasting off a cup 
of chocolate and a glass of water, all on a small round table ; 
he did not disturb himself for the youth, but went on soaking 
his strip of bread in the chocolate ; for he ate nothing but a 
roll, cut into four with an accuracy that argued some skill as 
an operator. Halpersohn had, in fact, practiced surgery in 
the course of his travels. 

“Well, young man,” said he as Vanda’s son came in, 
“ you, too, have come to require me to account for your 
mother? ” 

“ Yes, monsieur,” said Auguste. 

The young fellow had come forward as far as the large table, 
and his eye was immediately caught by several bank-notes lying 
among the little piles of gold-pieces. In the position in which 
the unhappy boy found himself, the temptation was stronger 


212 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


than his principles, well grounded as they were. He saw 
before him the means of rescuing his grandfather, and saving 
the fruits of twenty years’ labor imperiled by avaricious specu- 
lators. He fell. The fascination was as swift as thought, and 
justified itself by an idea of self-immolation that smiled on the 
boy. He said to himself — 

“ I shall be done for, but I shall save my mother and my 
grandfather.” 

Under this stress of antagonism between his reason and the 
impulse to crime, he acquired, as madmen do, a strange and 
fleeting dexterity, and instead of asking after his grandfather, 
he listened and agreed to all the doctor was saying. 

Halpersohn, like all acute observers, had understood the whole 
past history of the father, the daughter, and her son. He had 
scented or guessed the facts which Madame de Mergi’s con- 
versation had confirmed, and he felt in consequence a sort of 
benevolence toward his new clients ; as to respect or admira- 
tion, he was incapable of them. 

“Well, my dear boy,” said he familiarly, “I am keeping 
your mother to restore her to you young, handsome, and in 
good health. Hers is one of those rare diseases which doctors 
find very interesting ; and, beside, she is, through her mother, 
a fellow-countrywoman of mine. You and your grandfather 
must be brave enough to live without seeing her for a fortnight, 
and Madame ” 

“ La Baronne de Mergi.” 

“If she is a baroness, you are Baron ” asked Halper- 

sohn. 

At this moment the theft was effected. While the doctor 
was looking at his bread, heavy with chocolate, Auguste 
snatched up four folded notes, and had slipped them into his 
trousers pocket, affecting to keep his hand there out of sheer 
embarrassment. 

“ Yes, monsieur, I am a baron. So, too, is my grandfather ; 
he was public prosecutor at the time of the Restoration.” 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


213 


“ You blush, young man. You need not blush because you 
are a baron and poor — it is a very common case.” 

“And who told you, monsieur, that we are poor?” 

“Well, your grandfather told me that he had spent the 
night in the Champs-Elysees ; and though I know no palace 
where there is so fine a vault overhead as that which was glit- 
tering at two o’clock this morning, it was cold, I can tell you, 
in the palace where your grandfather was taking his airing. A 
man does not sleep in the Hotel de la BelU-Etoile (open air) 
by preference.” 

“ Has my grandfather been here? ” cried Auguste, seizing 
the opportunity to beat a retreat. “Thank you, monsieur. 
I will come again, with your permission, of course, for news 
of my mother.” 

As soon as he got out, the young baron went off to the 
bailiffs office, taking a hackney cab to get there the sooner. 
The man gave up the agreement, and the bill of costs duly 
receipted, and then desired the young man to take one of the 
clerks with him to release the person in charge from her func- 
tions. 

“And as Messrs. Barbet and Metivier live in your part of 
the town,” added he, “ my boy will take them the money 
and desire them to restore you the deed of lien on the 
property.” 

Auguste, who understood nothing of these phrases and for- 
malities, submitted. He received seven hundred francs in 
silver, the change out of his four thousand-franc notes, and went 
off in the clerk’s company. He got into the cab in a state of in- 
describable bewilderment, for, the end being achieved, remorse 
was making itself felt ; he saw himself disgraced and cursed by 
his grandfather, whose austerity was well known to him ; and 
he believed that his mother would die of grief if she heard of 
his guilt. All nature had changed before his eyes. He was 
lost; he no longer saw the snow, the houses looked like 
ghosts. 


214 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


No sooner was he at home than the young baron decided 
on his course of action, and it was certainly that of an honest 
man. He went into his mother’s room and took the diamond 
snuff-box given to his grandfather by the Emperor to send it 
with the seven hundred francs to Doctor Halpersohn with the 
following letter, which required several rough copies : 

“ Monsieur : — The fruits of twenty years’ labor — my grand- 
father’s work — were about to be absorbed by some money- 
lenders, who threatened him with imprisonment. Three 
thousand three hundred francs were enough to save him ; and 
seeing so much gold on your table, I could not resist the idea 
of seeing my grandparent free by thus making good to him 
the earnings of his long toil. I borrowed from you, without 
your leave, four thousand francs ; but as only three thousand 
three hundred francs were needed, I send you the remaining 
seven hundred, and with them a snuff-box set with diamonds, 
given by the Emperor to my grandfather; this will, I hope, 
indemnify you. 

“If you should not after this believe that I, who shall all 
my life regard you as my benefactor, am a man of honor, if 
you will at any rate preserve silence as to an action so unjusti- 
fiable in any other circumstances, you will have saved my 
grandfather as you will save my mother, and I shall be for life 
your devoted slave. 

“Auguste de Mergi.” 

At about half-past two, Auguste, who had walked to the 
Champs-Elysees, sent a messenger on to deliver at Doctor 
Halpersohn’s door a sealed box containing ten louis, a five- 
hundred-franc note, and the snuff-box ; then he slowly went 
home across the Pont d’lena by the Invalides and the boule- 
vards, trusting to Doctor Halpersohn’s generosity. 

The physician, who had at once discovered the theft, had 
meanwhile changed his views as to his clients. He supposed 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


215 


that the old man had come to rob him, and, not having 
succeeded, had sent this boy. He put no credence in the 
rank and titles they had assumed, and went off at once to the 
public prosecutor’s office to state his case, and desire that 
immediate steps should be taken for the prosecution. 

The prudence of the law rarely allows of such rapid pro- 
ceedings as the complaining parties would wish ; but, at about 
three in che afternoon, a police officer, followed by some 
detectives, who affected to be lounging on the boulevard, was 
catechising Madame Vauthiei as to hei lodgers, and the 
widow quite unconsciousl) was confirming the constable’s 
suspicions. 

Nepomucene, scenting the policeman, thought that it was 
the old man they wanted ; and as he was very fond of Monsieur 
Auguste, he hurried out to meet Monsieur Bernard, whom he 
intercepted in the Avenue de TObservatoire. 

“ Make your escape, monsieur,” cried he. “They have 
come to take you. The bailiffs were in yesterday and laid 
hands on everything. Mother Vauthier, who had hidden 
some stamped papers of yours, said you would be in Clichy 
by last night or this morning. There, do you see those 
sneaks? ” 

The old judge recognized the men as bailiffs, and he under- 
stood everything. 

“And Monsieur Godefroid?” he asked. 

“ Gone, never to come back. Mother Vauthier says he was 
a spy for your enemies.” 

Monsieur Bourlac determined that he would go at once to 
Barbet, and in a quarter of an hour he was there ; the old 
bookseller lived in the Rue Sainte-Catherine-d’Enfer. 

“ Oh, you have come yourself to fetch your agreement,” 
said the publisher, bowing to his victim. “ Here it is,” and, 
to the baron's great amazement, he handed him the document, 
which the old lawyer took, saying — 

“ 1 do not understand ” 


216 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


"Then it was not you who paid up? ” said Barbet. 

" Are you paid ? ” 

" Your grandson carried the money to the bailiff this 
morning.” 

"And is it true that you took possession of my goods 
yesterday? ” 

"Have you not been home for two days?” said Barbet. 
" Still, a retired public prosecutor must know what it is to be 
threatened with imprisonment for debt 1 ” 

On this the baron bowed coldly to Barbet, and returned 
home, supposing that the authorities had in fact come in 
search of the authors living on the upper floor. He walked 
slowly, absorbed in vague apprehensions, for Ndpomucene’s 
warning seemed to him more and more inexplicable. Could 
Godefroid have betrayed him? He mechanically turned 
down the Rue Notre-Dame des Champs, and went in by the 
back door, which happened to be open, running against 
N6pomuc£ne. 

" Oh, monsieur, make haste, come on ; they are taking 
Monsieur Auguste to prison ; they caught him on the boule- 
vard ; it was him they were hunting — they have been ques- 
tioning him ” 

The old man, with a spring like a tiger’s, rushed through 
the house and garden and out on to the boulevard, as swift as 
an arrow, and was just in time to see his grandson get into a 
hackney coach between three men. 

"Auguste,” he cried, " what is the meaning of this?” 

The youth burst into tears, and turned faint. 

"Monsieur,” said he to the police officer, whose scarf 
struck his eye, " I am Baron Bourlac, formerly a public prose- 
cutor; for pity’s sake, explain the matter.” 

"Monsieur, if you are Baron Bourlac, you will understand 
it in two words. I have just questioned this young man, and 
he has unfortunately confessed ” 

"What?” 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


217 


“ A theft of four thousand francs from Doctor Halpersohn.** 

“ Auguste ! Is it possible ? ’ * 

“ Grandpapa, I have sent him your diamond snuff-box as a 
guarantee. I wanted to save you from the disgrace of im- 
prisonment.” 

“ Wretched boy, what have you done?” cried the baron. 
“The diamonds are false; I sold the real stones three years 
ago.” 

The police officer and his clerk looked at each other with 
strange meaning. This glance, full of suggestions, was seen 
by the baron, and fell like a thunderbolt. 

“Monsieur,” said he to the officer, “be quite easy; I will 
go and see the public prosecutor; you can testify to the delu- 
sion in which I have kept my daughter and my grandson. 
You must do your duty, but, in the name of humanity, send 
my grandson to a cell by himself. I will go to the prison. 
Where are you taking him?” 

“Are you Baron Bourlac?” said the constable. 

“ Oh ! Monsieur ” 

“Because the public prosecutor, the examining judge, and 
I myself could not believe that such men as you and your 
grandson could be guilty ; like the doctor, we concluded that 
some swindlers had borrowed your names.” 

He took the baron aside and said — 

“ Were you at Doctor Halpersohn’s house this morning?” 

“Yes, monsieur.” 

“And your grandson too, about half-an-hour later?” 

“ I know nothing about that ; I have this instant come in, 
and I have not seen my grandson since yesterday.” 

“The writs he showed me and the warrants for arrest ex- 
plain everything,” said the police agent. “I know his mo- 
tive for the crime. I ought indeed to arrest you, monsieur, 
as abetting your grandson, for your replies confirm the facts 
alleged by the complainant ; but the notices served on you, 
and which I return to you,” he added, holding out a packet 


m 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


of stamped papers which he had in his hand, “certainly prove 
you to be Baron Bourlac. At the same time, you must be 
prepared to be called up before Monsieur Marest, the examin- 
ing judge in this case. I believe I am right in relaxing the 
usual rule in consideration of your past dignity. 

“As to your grandson, I will speak of him to the public 
prosecutor as soon as I go in, and we will show every possible 
consideration for the grandson of a retired judge, and the vic- 
tim of a youthful error. Still, there is the indictment, the ac- 
cused has confessed ; I have sent in my report, and have a 
warrant for his imprisonment ; I cannot help myself. As to 
the place of detention, your grandson will be taken to the 
Conciergerie.” 

“Thank you, monsieur,” said the miserable Bourlac. He 
fell senseless on the snow, and tumbled into one of the rain- 
water cisterns, which at that time divided the trees on the 
boulevard. 

The police officer called for help, and Nepomucene hurried 
out with Madame Vauthier. The old man was carried in- 
doors, and the woman begged the police constable, as he went 
by the Rue d’Enfer, to send Doctor Berton as quickly as pos- 
sible. 

“What is the matter with my grandfather ? ” asked poor 
Auguste. 

“He is crazed, sir. That is what comes of thieving!” 
said the Vauthier. 

Auguste made a rush as though to crack his skull ; but the 
two men held him. 

“Come, come, young man. Take it quietly,” said the 
officer. “ Be calm. You have done wrong, but it is not 
irremediable.” 

“ But pray, monsieur, tell the woman that my grandfather 
has probably not touched a morsel of food for these twenty* 
four hours.” 

“ Oh, poor creatures ! ” said the officer to himself. 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


219 


He stopped the coach, which had started, and said a word 
in his clerk’s ear ; the man ran off to speak to old Vauthier, 
and then returned at once. 

Monsieur Berton was of opinion that Monsieur Bernard — 
for he knew him by no other name — was suffering from an 
attack of high fever ; but when Madame Vauthier had told 
him of all the events that had led up to it in the way in which 
a housekeeper tells a story, the doctor thought it necessary to 
report the whole business next day to Monsieur Alain at the 
church of Saint-Jacques du Haut-Pas, and Monsieur Alain 
sent a pencil note by messenger to Monsieur Nicolas, Rue 
Chanoinesse. 

Godefroid, on reaching home the night before, had given 
the notes on the book to Monsieur Nicolas, who spent the 
greater part of the night in reading the first volume of Baron 
Bourlac’s work. 

On the following day Madame de la Chanterie told Gode- 
froid that if his determination still held good, he might begin 
on his work at once. 

Godefroid, initiated by her into the financial secrets of the 
Society, worked for seven or eight hours a day, and for several 
months, under the supervision of Frederic Mongenod, who 
came every Sunday to look through the work, and who praised 
him for the way in which it was done. 

“ You are a valuable acquisition for the saints among whom 
you live,” said the banker when all the accounts were clearly 
set forth and balanced. “ Two or three hours a day will now 
be enough to keep the accounts in order, and during the rest 
of your time you can help them, if you still feel the vocation 
as you did six months since.” 

This was in the month of July, 1838. During the time 
that had elapsed since the affair of the Boulevard du Mont- 
Parnasse, Godefroid, eager to prove himself worthy of his 
companions, had never asked a single question as to Baron 


220 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


Bouriac ; for, as he had not heard a word, nor found any- 
thing in the account-books that bore on the matter, he sus- 
pected that the silence that was preserved with regard to the 
two men who had been so ruthless to Madame de la Chan- 
terie, was intended as a test to which he was being put, or 
perhaps as proof that the noble lady’s friends had avenged 
her. 

But, two months later, in the course of a walk one day, he 
went as far as the Boulevard du Mont-Parnasse, managed to 
meet Madame Vauthier, and asked her for some news of the 
Bernard family. 

“Who can tell, my dear Monsieur Godefroid, what has 
become of those people. Two days after your expedition — 
for it was you, you cunning dog, who blabbed to my landlord 
— somebody came who took that old swaggerer off my hands. 
Then, in four-and-twenty hours, everything was cleared out — 
not a stick left, nor a word said — perfect strangers to me, and 
they told me nothing. I believe he packed himself off to 
Algiers with his precious grandson ; for N£pomuc£ne, who 
was very devoted to that young thief — he is no better than he 
should be himself — did not find him in the Conciergerie, and 
he alone knows where they are, and the scamp has gone off 
and left me. You bring up these wretched foundlings and 
this is the reward you get ; they leave you high and dry. I 
have not been able to find any one to take his place, and, as 
the neighborhood is very crowded and the house is full, I am 
worked to death.** 

And Godefroid would never have known anything more 
of Baron Bouriac but for the conclusion of the adventure, 
which came about through one of the chance meetings which 
occur in Paris. 

In the month of September, Godefroid was walking down 
the Champs-Elysees, when, as he passed the end of the Rue 
Marbeuf, he remembered Doctor Halpersohn. 

“ I ought to call on him,” thought he, “ and ask if he 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


221 


cured Bourlac’s daughter. What a voice, what a gift she had ! 
She wanted to dedicate herself to God ! ” 

As he got to the Rond-Point, Godefroid crossed the road 
hurriedly to avoid the carriages that came quickly down the 
grand avenue, and he ran up against a youth who had a young- 
looking woman on his arm. 

“ Take care ! ” cried the young man. “ Are you blind ? ” 

“Why, it is you!” cried Godefroid, recognizing Auguste 
de Mergi. 

Auguste was so well dressed, so handsome, so smart, so 
proud of the lady he was escorting, that, but for the memories 
that rushed on his mind, Godefroid would hardly have recog- 
nized them. 

“ Why, it is dear Monsieur Godefroid ! ” exclaimed the 
lady. 

On hearing the delightful tones of Vanda’s enchanting 
voice, and seeing her walking, Godefroid stood riveted to the 
spot. 

“ Cured ! M he exclaimed. 

“Ten days ago he allowed me to walk,” she replied. 

“ Halpersohn ? ” 

“Yes,” said she. “And why have you never come to see 
us? But, indeed, you were wise. My hair was not cut off 
till about a week ago. This that you see is but a wig ; but 
the doctor assures me it will grow again ! But we have so 
much to say to each other. Will you not come to dine with 
us ? Oh, that melodeon ! Oh, monsieur ! ” and she put her 
handkerchief to her eyes. “ I will treasure it all my life ! 
My son will preserve it as a relic. My father has sought for 
you all through Paris, and he is anxiously in search, too, of 
his unknown benefactors. He will die of grief if you cannot 
help him to find them. He suffers from the deepest and 
darkest melancholy, and I cannot always succeed in rousing 
him from it.” 

Fascinated alike by the voice of this charming woman re- 


222 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY, 


called from the grave, and by that of irresistible curiosity, 
Godefroid gave his arm to the hand held out by the Baronne 
de Mergi, who let her son go on in front with an errand, which 
the lad had understood from his mother’s nod. 

“ I shall not take you far ; we are living in the Allee d’ Antin, 
in a pretty little house of English fashion ; we have it all to 
ourselves, each of us occupies a floor. Oh, we are very com- 
fortable ! And my father believes that you have had a great 

deal to do with the good-fortune that is poured upon us ” 

“I?” 

“Did you not know that a place has been created for him 
in consequence of a report from the minister for public in- 
struction, a Chair of Legislature, like one at the Sorbonne? 
My father will give his first course of lectures in the month 
of November next. The great work on which he was engaged 
will be published in a month or so; the house of Cavalier is 
bringing it out on half-profits with my father, and has paid 
him thirty thousand francs on account of his share ; so he is 
buying the house we live in. The minister of justice allows 
me a pension of twelve hundred francs as the daughter of a 
retired magistrate ; my father has his pension of a thousand 
crowns, and he had five thousand francs with his professorship. 
We are so economical that we shall be almost rich. 

“ My Auguste will begin studying the law a few months 
hence ; meanwhile, he has employment in the public prose- 
cutor’s office, and gets twelve hundred francs. Oh, Monsieur 
Godefroid, never mention that miserable business of my poor 
Auguste’s. For my part, I bless him every day for the deed 
which his grandfather has not yet forgiven. His mother 
blesses him, Halpersohn is devoted to him, but the old public 
prosecutor is implacable ! ” 

“What business?” asked Godefroid. 

“Ah ! that is just like your generosity ! 99 cried Vanda. 
“You have a noble heart. Your mother must be proud of 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


223 


“ On my word, I know nothing of the matter you allude 
to,” said Godefroid. 

“ Really, you did not hear?” And she frankly told the 
story of Auguste’s borrowing from the doctor, admiring her 
son for the action. 

“But if I am to say nothing about this before the baron,” 
said Godefroid, “ tell me how your son got out of the 
scrape.” 

“Well,” said Vanda, “as I told you, my son is in the 
public prosecutor’s office, and has met with the greatest kind- 
ness. He was not kept more than eight-and-forty hours in the 
Conciergerie, where he was lodged with the governor. The 
worthy doctor, who did not get Auguste’s beautiful, sublime 
letter till the evening, withdrew the charge ; and by the inter- 
vention of a former presiding judge of the Supreme Court — a 
man my father had never even seen — the public prosecutor 
had the police agent’s report and the warrant for arrest both 
destroyed. In fact, not a trace of the affair survives but in my 
heart, in my son’s conscience, and in his grandfather’s mind — 
who, since that day, speaks to my boy in the coldest terms, 
and treats him as a stranger. 

“Only yesterday, Haipersohn was interceding for him; 
but my father, who will not listen to me, much as he loves me, 
replied : ‘ You are the person robbed, you can and ought to 
forgive. But I am answerable for the thief — and, when I sat 
on the bench, I never pronounced a pardon ! ’ * You will kill 
your daughter,’ said Haipersohn — I heard them. My father 
kept silence.” 

“But who is it that has helped you? ” 

“A gentleman who is, we believe, employed to distribute 
the benefactions of the Queen.” 

“ What is he like? ” asked Godefroid. 

“He is a grave, thin man, sad-looking — something like my 
father. It was he who had my father conveyed to the house 
where we now are, when he was in a high fever. And, just 


224 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


fancy, as soon as my father was well, I was removed from the 
private hospital and brought there, where I found my old bed- 
room just as though I had never left it. Halpersohn, whom 
the tall gentleman had quite bewitched — how I know not — 
then told me all about my father’s sufferings, and how he had 
sold the diamonds off his snuff-box ! My father and my boy 
often without bread, and making believe to be rich in my 
presence ! Oh, Monsieur Godefroid, those two men are 
martyrs! What can I say to my father? I can only repay 
him and my son by suffering for them, like them.” 

“And had the tall gentleman something of a military 
air?” 

“ Oh, you know him ! ” cried Vanda, as they reached the 
door of the house. 

She seized Godefroid’s hand with the grip of a woman in 
hysterics, and dragging him into a drawing-room of which the 
door stood open, she exclaimed — “Father, Monsieur Gode- 
froid knows your benefactor.” 

Baron Bourlac, whom Godefroid found dressed in a style 
suitable to a retired judge of his high rank, held out his hand 
to Godefroid, and said — 

“I thought as much.” 

Godefroid shook his head in negation of any knowledge of 
the details of this noble revenge ; but the baron did not give 
him time to speak. 

“Monsieur,” he went on, “only Providence can be more 
powerful, only Love can be more thoughtful, only Mother- 
hood can be more clear-sighted, than your friends who are 
allied with those great divinities. I bless the chance that has 
led to our meeting again, for Monsieur Joseph has vanished 
completely; and as he has succeeded in avoiding every snare 
I could lay to ascertain his real name and residence, I should 
have died in grief. But here, read his letter. And you know 
him?” 

Godefroid read as follows: 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


225 


“ Monsieur le Baron Bourlac, the money we have laid out 
for you by the orders of a charitable lady amounts to a sum 
of fifteen thousand francs. Take note of this, that it may be 
repaid either by you or by your descendants when your family 
is sufficiently prosperous to allow of it, for it belongs to the 
poor. When such repayment is possible, deposit the money 
you owe with the Brothers Mongenod, bankers. God forgive 
you your sins 1 ” 

The letter was mysteriously signed with five crosses. 

Godefroid returned it. “ The five crosses, sure enough ! ** 
said he to himself. 

“Now, since you know all,** said the old man, “you who 
were this mysterious lady’s messenger — tell me her name.” 

“Her name !” cried Godefroid; “ her name ! Unhappy 
man, never ask it ! never try to find it out. Oh, madame,” 
said he, taking Madame de Mergi’s hand in his own, which 
shook, “ if you value your father’s sanity, keep him in his 
ignorance; never let him make any attempt ” 

The father, the daughter, and Auguste stood frozen with 
amazement. 

“ But tell it ! ” said Vanda. 

“Well, then, the woman who has preserved your daughter 
for you,” said Godefroid, looking at the old lawyer, “who 
has restored her to you, young, lovely, fresh, and living — who 
has snatched her from the grave — who has rescued your grand- 
son from disgrace — who has secured to you a happy and 

respected old age — who has saved you all three ” he paused, 

“ is a woman whom you sent innocent to the hulks for twenty 
years,” he went on, addressing Monsieur Bourlac, “ on whom, 
from your judgment-seat, you poured every insult, whose saint- 
liness you mocked at, and from whom you snatched a lovely 
daughter to send her to the most horrible death, for she was 
guillotined ! ” 

Godefroid, seeing Vanda drop senseless on to a chair, 
15 


226 


THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY. 


rushed out of the room, and from thence into the Allee 
d’Antin, where he took to his heels. 

“If you would earn my forgiveness,” said Baron Bourlac 
to his grandson, “ follow that man and find out where he 
lives.” 

Auguste was off like a dart. 

By half-past eight next morning, Baron Bourlac was knock- 
ing at the old yellow gate of the Hotel de la Chanterie, Rue 
Chanoinesse. He asked for Madame de la Chanterie, and the 
porter pointed to the stone steps. Happily they were all 
going to breakfast, and Godefroid recognized the baron in the 
courtyard through one Gf the loopholes that lighted the stairs. 
He had but just time to fly down into the drawing-room where 
they were all assembled, crying out — “ Baron Bourlac.” 

On hearing this name, Madame de la Chanterie, supported 
by the Abbe de Veze, disappeared into her room. 

“ You shall not come in, you imp of Satan ! ” cried Manon, 
who recognized the lawyer and placed herself in front of the 
drawing-room door. “ Do you want to kill my mistress?” 

“Come, Manon, let the gentleman pass,” said Monsieur 
Alain. 

Manon dropped on to a chair as if her knees had both given 
way at once. 

“Gentlemen,” said the baron in a voice of deep emotion, 
as he recognized Godefroid and Monsieur Joseph, and bowed 
to the two strangers, “ beneficence confers a claim on those 
benefited by it ! ” 

“You owe nothing to us,” said the worthy Alain ; “you 
owe everything to God.” 

“You are saints, and you have the serenity of saints,” 
replied the old lawyer. “You will hear me, I beg. I have 
learnt that the superhuman blessings that have been heaped 
on me for eighteen months past are the work of a person whom 
I deeply injured in the course of my duty ; it was fifteen years 


THE SEAMY SIDE OE HISTORY. 


227 


before I was assured of her innocence; this, gentlemen, is 
the single remorse I have known as due to the exercise of my 
powers. Listen ! I have not much longer to live, but I shall 
lose that short term of life, necessary still to my children 
whom Madame de la Chanterie has saved, if I cannot win her 
forgiveness. Gentlemen, I will remain kneeling on the square 
of Notre-Dame till she has spoken one word ! I will wait for 
her there ! I will kiss the print of her feet ; I will find tears 
to soften her heart — I who have been dried up like stubble by 

seeing my daughter’s sufferings ” 

The door of Madame de la Chanterie’s room was opened, 
the Abbe de Veze came through like a shade, and said to 
Monsieur Joseph — 

“That voice is killing madame.” 

“What! she is there! She has passed there!” cried 
Bourlac. 

He fell on his knees, kissed the floor, and melted into tears, 
crying in a heart-rending tone — 

“In the name of Jesus who died on the cross, forgive! 
forgive ! For my child has suffered a thousand deaths ! ” 

The old man collapsed so entirely that the spectators 
believed he was dead. 

At this moment Madame de la Chanterie appeared like a 
spectre in the doorway, leaning, half-fainting, against the 
side-post. 

“In the name of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette, whom 
I see on the scaffold, of Madame Elizabeth, of my daughter, 
and of yours — in the name of Jesus, I forgive you.” 

As he heard the words, the old man looked up and said — 
“Thus are the angels avenged ! ” 

Monsieur Joseph and Monsieur Nicolas helped him to his 
feet and led him out to the courtyard ; Godefroid went to call 
a coach ; and, when they heard the rattle of wheels, Monsieur 
Nicolas said, as he helped the old man into it — 

“ Come, no more, monsieur, or you will kill the mother 




THE SEAMY SIDE OF HISTORY, 


too. The power of God is infinite, but human nature has its 
limits.” 

That day Godefroid joined the Order of the Brethren of 
Consolation. 

Vierzchgvnia, Ukraine, December , 1847. 




AT THE SIGN OF THE CAT AND 
RACKET 

{La Maison du Chat- qui- P e lot e). 

Dedicated to Mademoiselle Marie de Montheau . 

Half-way down the Rue Saint-Denis, almost at the corner 
of the Rue du Petit-Lion, there stood formerly one of those 
delightful houses which enable historians to reconstruct old 
Paris by analogy. The threatening walls of this tumbledown 
abode seemed to have been decorated with hieroglyphics. For 
what other name could the passer-by give to the Xs and Vs 
which the horizontal or diagonal timbers traced on the front, 
outlined by little parallel cracks in the plaster? It was evident 
that every beam quivered in its mortises at the passing of the 
lightest vehicle. This venerable structure was crowned by a 
triangular roof of which no example will, ere long, be seen in 
Paris. This covering, warped by the extremes of the Paris 
climate, projected three feet over the roadway, as much to 
protect the threshold from the rainfall as to shelter the wall 
of a loft and its sill-less dormer window. This upper story 
was built of planks, overlapping each other like slates, in 
order, no doubt, not to overweight the frail house. 

One rainy morning in the month of March, a young man, 
carefully wrapped in his cloak, stood under the awning of a 
store opposite this old house, which he was studying with the 
enthusiasm of an antiquary. In point of fact, this relic of the 
civic life of the sixteenth century offered more than one 
problem to the consideration of an observer. Each story pre- 
sented some singularity; on the first floor four tall, narrow 
windows, close together, were filled as to the lower panes with 
boards, so as to produce the doubtful light by which a clever 

( 229 ) 


230 


SIGN OF THE CAT AND FA CHET. 


clerk can ascribe to his goods the color his customers inquire 
for. The young man seemed very scornful of this essential 
part of the house ; his eyes had not yet rested on it. The win- 
dows of the second floor, where the Venetian blinds were 
drawn up, revealing little India-muslin curtains behind the 
large Bohemian glass-panes, did not interest him either. His 
attention was attracted to the third floor, to the modest sash- 
frames of wood, so clumsily wrought that they might have 
found a place in the Museum of Arts and Crafts to illustrate 
the early efforts of French carpentry. These windows were 
glazed with small squares of glass so green that, but for his 
good eyes, the young man could not have seen the blue- 
checked cotton curtains which screened the mysteries of the 
room from profane eyes. Now and then the watcher, weary 
of his fruitless contemplation, or of the silence in which the 
house was buried, like the whole neighborhood, dropped his 
eyes toward the lower regions. An involuntary smile parted 
his lips each time he looked at the store, where, in fact, there 
were some laughable details. 

A formidable wooden beam, resting on four pillars, which 
appeared to have bent under the weight of the decrepit house, 
had been incrusted with as many coats of different paint as 
there are of rouge on an old duchess’ cheek. In the middle 
of this broad and fantastically carved joist there was an old 
painting representing a cat playing rackets. This picture was 
what moved the young man to mirth. But it must be said 
that the wittiest of modern painters could not invent so comi- 
cal a caricature. The animal held in one of its fore-paws a 
racket as big as itself, and stood on its hind legs to aim at 
hitting an enormous ball, returned by a man in a fine em- 
broidered coat. Drawing, color, and accessories, all were 
treated in such a way as to suggest that the artist had meant 
to make game of the store-owner and of the passing observer. 
Time, while impairing this artless painting, had made it yet 
more grotesque by introducing some uncertain features which 


SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET, 


231 


must have puzzled the conscientious idler. For instance, the 
cat’s tail had been eaten into in such a way that it might now 
have been taken for the figure of a spectator — so long, and 
thick, and furry were the tails of our forefathers’ cats. To 
the right of the picture, on an azure field which ill disguised 
the decay of the wood, might be read the name “ Guillaume,” 
and to the left, “ Successor to Master Chevrel.” Sun and 
rain had worn away most of the gilding parsimoniously applied 
to the letters of this superscription, in which the Us and Vs 
had changed places in obedience to the laws of old-world 
orthography. 

To quench the pride of those who believe that the world 
is growing cleverer day by day, and that modern humbug 
surpasses everything, it may be observed that these signs, of 
which the origin seems so whimsical to many Paris merchants, 
are the dead pictures of once living pictures by which our 
roguish ancestors contrived to tempt customers into their 
houses. Thus the Spinning Sow, the Green Monkey, and 
others, were animals in cages whose skill astonished the 
passer-by, and whose accomplishments prove the patience of 
the fifteenth-century artisan. Such curiosities did more to 
enrich their fortunate owners than the signs of “ Providence,” 
“ Good-faith,” “ Grace of God,” and “ Decapitation of John 
the Baptist,” which may still be seen in the Rue Saint-Denis. 

However, our stranger was certainly not standing there to 
admire the cat, which a minute’s attention sufficed to stamp 
on his memory. The young man himself had his peculiarities. 
His cloak, folded after the manner of an antique drapery, 
showed a smart pair of shoes, all the more remarkable in the 
midst of the Paris mud, because he wore white silk stockings, 
on which the splashes betrayed his impatience. He had just 
come, no doubt, from a wedding or a ball ; for at this early 
hour he had in his hand a pair of white gloves, and his black 
hair, now out of curl, and flowing over his shoulders, showed 
that it had been dressed a la Caracalla , a fashion introduced 


232 


SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET 


as much by David’s school of painting as by the mania for 
Greek and Roman styles which characterized the early years 
of this century. 

In spite of the noise made by a few truck gardeners, who, 
being late, rattled past toward the great market-place at a 
gallop, the busy street lay in a stillness of which the magic 
charm is known only to those who have wandered through 
deserted Paris at the hours when its roar, hushed for a moment, 
rises and spreads in the distance like the great voice of the sea. 
This strange young man must have seemed as curious to the 
storekeeping folk of the “ Cat and Racket ” as the “ Cat and 
Racket ” was to him. A dazzling white cravat made his 
anxious face look even paler than it really was. The fire that 
flashed in his black eyes, gloomy and sparkling by turns, was 
in harmony with the singular outline of his features, with his 
wide, flexible mouth, hardened into a smile. His forehead, 
knit with violent annoyance, had a stamp of doom. Is not 
the forehead the most prophetic feature of a man ? When the 
stranger’s brow expressed passion the furrows formed in it 
were terrible in their strength and energy ; but when he re- 
covered his calmness, so easily upset, it beamed with a lumi- 
nous grace which gave great attractiveness to a countenance 
in which joy, grief, love, anger, or scorn blazed out so con- 
tagiously that the coldest man could not fail to be impressed. 

He was so thoroughly vexed by the time when the dormer 
window of the loft was suddenly flung open, that he did not 
observe the apparition of three laughing faces, pink and white 
and chubby, but as vulgar as the face of Commerce as it is 
seen in sculpture on certain monuments. These three faces, 
framed by the window, recalled the puffy cherubs floating 
among the clouds that surround God the Father. The ap- 
prentices snuffed up the exhalations of the street with an 
eagerness that showed how hot and poisonous the atmosphere 
of their garret must be. After pointing to the singular senti- 
nel, the most jovial, as he seemed, of the apprentices retired 


SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET. 


233 


and came back holding an instrument whose hard metal pipe 
is now superseded by a leather tube; and they all grinned 
with mischief as they looked down on the loiterer, and 
sprinkled him with a fine white shower of which the scent 
proved that three chins had just been shaved. Standing on 
tiptoe, in the farthest corner of their loft, to enjoy their vic- 
tim’s rage, the lads ceased laughing on seeing the haughty 
indifference with which the young man shook his cloak, and 
the intense contempt expressed by his face as he glanced up 
at the empty window-frame. 

At this moment a slender white hand threw up the lower 
half of one of the clumsy windows on the third floor by the 
aid of the sash-runners, of which the pulley so often suddenly 
gives way and releases the heavy panes it ought to hold up. 
The watcher was then rewarded for his long waiting. The 
face of a young girl appeared, as fresh as one of the white cups 
that bloom on the bosom of the waters, crowned by a frill of 
tumbled India-muslin, which gave her head a look of ex- 
quisite innocence. Though wrapped in brown stuff, her neck 
and shoulders gleamed here and there through little openings 
left by her movements in sleep. No expression of embarrass- 
ment detracted from the candor of her face, or the calm look 
of eyes immortalized long since in the sublime works of 
Raphael ; here were the same grace, the same repose as in 
these Virgins, and now proverbial. There was a delightful 
contrast between the cheeks of that face on which sleep had, 
as it were, given high relief to a superabundance of life, and 
the antiquity of the heavy window with its clumsy shape and 
black sill. Like those day-blowing flowers, which in the early 
morning have not yet unfurled their cups, twisted by the chills 
of night, the girl, as yet hardly awake, let her blue eyes 
wander beyond the neighboring roofs to look at the sky ; 
then, from habit, she cast them down on the gloomy depths 
of the street, where they immediately met those of her adorer. 
Vanity, no doubt, distressed her at being seen in undress; she 


234 


SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET. 


started back, the worn pulley gave way, and the sash fell with 
the rapid run, which in our day has earned for this artless 
invention of our forefathers an odious name.* The vision had 
disappeared. 

To the young man the most radiant star of morning seemed 
to be hidden by a cloud. 

During these little incidents the heavy inside shutters that 
protected the slight windows of the store of the “ Cat and 
Racket ” had been removed as if by magic. The old door 
with its knocker was opened back against the wall of the 
entry by a manservant, apparently coeval with the sign, who, 
with a shaking hand, hung upon it a square of cloth, on which 
were embroidered in yellow silk the words: “Guillaume, 
successor to Chevrel.” Many a passer-by would have found 
it difficult to guess the class of trade carried on by Monsieur 
Guillaume. Between the strong iron bars which protected his 
store-windows on the outside, certain packages, wrapped in 
brown linen, were hardly visible, though as numerous as her- 
rings swimming in a shoal. Notwithstanding the primitive as- 
pect of the Gothic front, Monsieur Guillaume, of all the mer- 
chant clothiers in Paris, was the one whose stores were always 
the best provided, whose connections were the most extensive, 
and whose commercial honesty never lay under the slightest 
suspicion. If some of his brethren in business made a con- 
tract with the Government, and had not the required quantity 
of cloth, he was always ready to deliver it, however large the 
number of pieces tendered for. The wily dealer knew a 
thousand ways of extracting the largest profits without being 
obliged, like them, to court patrons, cringing to them, or 
making them costly presents. When his fellow-tradesmen could 
only pay in good bills of long date, he would mention his 
notary as an accommodating man, and managed to get a 
second profit out of the bargain, thanks to this arrangement, 
which had made it a proverb among the traders of the Rue 
* Fengtre a. la Guillotine : Guillotine -sash. 


SIGN OF THE CAT AND FA CHET. 


235 


Saint-Denis: “Heaven preserve you from Monsieur Guil- 
laume’s notary ! ” to signify a heavy discount. 

The old merchant was to be seen standing on the threshold 
of his store, as if by a miracle, the instant the servant with- 
drew. Monsieur Guillaume looked at the Rue Saint-Denis, at 
the neighboring stores, and at the weather, like a man disem- 
barking at Havre, and seeing France once more after a long 
voyage. Having convinced himself that nothing had changed 
while he was asleep, he presently perceived the stranger on 
guard, and he, on his part, gazed at the patriarchal draper as 
Humboldt may have scrutinized the first electric eel he saw in 
America. Monsieur Guillaume wore loose black velvet 
breeches, pepper-and-salt stockings, and square-toed shoes 
with silver buckles. His coat, with square-cut fronts, square- 
cut tails, and square-cut collar, clothed his slightly bent 
figure in greenish cloth, finished with white metal buttons, 
tawny from wear. His gray hair was so accurately combed 
and flattened over his yellow pate that it made it look like a 
furrowed field. His little green eyes, that might have been 
pierced with a gimlet, flashed beneath arches faintly tinged 
with red in the place of eyebrows. Anxieties had wrinkled 
his forehead with as many horizontal lines as there were 
creases in his coat. This colorless face expressed patience, 
commercial. shrewdness, and the sort of wily cupidity which 
is needful in business. At that time these old families were 
less rare than they are now, in which the characteristic habits 
and costume of their calling, surviving in the midst of more 
recent civilization, were preserved as cherished traditions, like 
the antediluvian remains found by Cuvier in the quarries. 

The head of the Guillaume family was a notable upholder 
of ancient practices ; he might be heard to regret the Provost 
of Merchants, and never did he mention a decision of the 
Tribunal of Commerce without calling it the “ Sentence of 
the Consuls.” Up and dressed the first of the household, in 
obedience, no doubt, to these old customs, he stood sternly 

V 


236 


SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET 


awaiting the appearance of his three assistants, ready to scold 
them in case they were late. These young disciples of Mer- 
cury knew nothing more terrible than the wordless assiduity 
with which the master scrutinized their faces and their move- 
ments on Monday in search of evidence or traces of their 
pranks. But at this moment the old clothier paid no heed to 
his apprentices ; he was absorbed in trying to divine the motive 
of the anxious looks which the young man in silk stockings and a 
cloak cast alternately at his signboard and into the depths of 
his store. The daylight was now brighter, and enabled the 
stranger to discern the cashier’s corner inclosed by a railing 
and screened by old, green-silk curtains, where were kept the 
immense ledgers, the silent oracles of the house. The too 
inquisitive gazer seemed to covet this little nook, and to be 
taking the plan of a dining-room at one side, lighted by a sky- 
light, whence the family at meals could easily see the smallest 
incident that might occur at the store-door. So much affec- 
tion for his dwelling seemed suspicious to a trader who had 
lived long enough to remember the law of maximum prices; 
Monsieur Guillaume naturally thought that this sinister per- 
sonage had an eye to the till of the Cat and Racket. After 
quietly observing the mute duel which was going on between 
his master and the stranger, the eldest of the apprentices, 
having seen that the young man was stealthily watching the 
windows of the third floor, ventured to place himself on the 
flagstone where Monsieur Guillaume was standing. He took 
two steps out into the street, raised his head, and fancied that 
he caught sight of Mademoiselle Augustine Guillaume in hasty 
retreat. The draper, annoyed by his assistant’s perspicacity, 
shot a side-glance at him ; but the draper and his amorous 
apprentice were suddenly relieved from the fears which the 
young man’s presence had excited in their minds. He hailed 
a hackney-coach on its way to a neighboring stand, and jumped 
into it with an air of affected indifference. This departure 
was a balm to the hearts of the other two lads, who had been 


SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET 237 

somewhat uneasy as to meeting the victim of their practical 
joke. 

“Well, gentlemen, what ails you that you are standing 
therewith your arms folded?” said Monsieur Guillaume to his 
three neophytes. “ In former days, bless you, when I was in 
Master Chevrel’s service, I should have overhauled more than 
two pieces of cloth by this time.” 

“ Then it was daylight earlier,” said the second assistant, 
whose duty this was. 

The old storekeeper could not help smiling. Though two 
of these young fellows, who were confided to his care by their 
fathers, rich manufacturers at Louvres and at Sedan, had only 
to ask and to have a hundred thousand francs the day when 
they were old enough to settle in life, Guillaume regarded it 
as his duty to keep them under the rod of an old-world des- 
potism, unknown nowadays in the showy modern stores, where 
the apprentices expect to be rich men at thirty. He made 
them work like negroes. These three assistants were equal to 
a business which would harry ten such clerks as those whose 
sybaritical tastes now swell the columns of the budget. Not a 
sound disturbed the peace of this solemn house, where the 
hinges were always oiled, and where the meanest article of fur- 
niture showed the respectable cleanliness which reveals strict 
order and economy. The most waggish of the three youths 
often amused himself by writing the date of its first appearance 
on the Gruyere cheese which was left to their tender mercies 
at breakfast, and which it was their pleasure to leave untouched. 
This bit of mischief, and a few others of the same stamp, would 
sometimes bring a smile on the face of the younger of Guil- 
laume’s two daughters, the pretty maiden who had just now 
appeared to the bewitched man in the street. 

Though each of the apprentices, even the eldest, paid a 
round sum for his board, not one of them would have been 
bold enough to remain at the master’s table when dessert was 
served. When Madame Guillaume talked of dressing the 


238 


SIGN OF THE CAT AND FA CHET. 


salad, the hapless youths trembled as they thought of the thrift 
witn which her prudent hand dispensed the oil. They could 
never think of spending a night away from the house without 
having given, long before, a plausible reason for such an 
irregularity. Every Sunday, each in his turn, two of them 
accompanied the Guillaume family to mass at Saint-Leu, and 
to vespers. Mesdemoiselles Virginie and Augustine, simply 
attired in calico print, each took the arm of an apprentice 
and walked in front, under the piercing eye of their mother, 
who closed the little family procession with her husband, 
accustomed by her to carry two large prayer-books, bound in 
black morocco. The second apprentice received no salary. 
As for the eldest, whose twelve years of perseverance and dis- 
cretion had initiated him into the secrets of the house, he was 
paid eight hundred francs a year as the reward of his labors. 
On certain family festivals he received as a gratuity some little 
gift, to which Madame Guillaume’s dry and wrinkled hand 
alone gave value — netted purses, which she took care to stuff 
with cotton-batting, to show off the fancy stitches, braces of 
the strongest make, or heavy silk stockings. Sometimes, but 
rarely, this prime minister was admitted to share the pleasures 
of the family when they went into the country, or when, after 
waiting for months, they made up their mind to exert the 
right acquired by taking a box at the theatre to command a 
piece which Paris had already forgotten. 

As to the other assistants, the barrier of respect which for- 
merly divided a master draper from his apprentices was so 
firmly established between them and the old storekeeper, that 
they would have been more likely to steal a piece of cloth 
than to infringe this time-honored etiquette. Such reserve 
may now appear ridiculous ; but these old houses were a 
school of honesty and sound morals. The masters adopted 
their apprentices. The young man’s linen was cared for, 
mended, and often replaced by the mistress of the house. If 
an apprentice fell ill, he was the object of truly maternal at- 


SIGN- OF THE CAT AND FA CHET. 


239 


tention. In a case of danger the master lavished his money 
in calling in the most celebrated physicians, for he was not 
answerable to their parents merely for the good conduct and 
training of the lads. If one of them, whose character was 
unimpeachable, suffered misfortune, these old tradesmen knew 
how to value the intelligence he had displayed, and they did 
not hesitate to intrust the happiness of their daughters to 
men whom they had long trusted with their fortunes. Guil- 
laume was one of these men of the old school, and if he had 
their ridiculous side, he had all their good qualities j and 
Joseph Lebas, the chief assistant, an orphan without any for- 
tune, was in his mind destined to be the husband of Vir- 
ginie, his elder daughter. But Joseph did not share the 
symmetrical ideas of his master, who would not for an empire 
have given his second daughter in marriage before the elder. 
The unhappy assistant felt that his heart was wholly given to 
Mademoiselle Augustine, the younger. In order to justify 
this passion, which had grown up in secret, it is necessary 
to inquire a little further into the springs of the absolute 
government which ruled the old cloth-merchant’s household. 

Guillaume had two daughters. The elder, Mademoiselle 
Virginie, was the very image of her mother. Madame Guil- 
laume, daughter of the Sieur Chevrel, sat so upright in the 
stool behind her desk, that more than once she had heard 
some wag bet that she was a stuffed figure. Her long, thin 
face betrayed exaggerated piety. Devoid of attractions or 
of amiable manners, Madame Guillaume commonly decorated 
her head — that of a woman near on sixty — with a cap of a 
particular and unvarying shape, with long lappets, like that 
of a widow. In all the neighborhood she was known as the 
“ portress nun.” Her speeclvwas curt, and her movements 
had the stiff precision of a semaphore. Her eye, with a 
gleam in it like a cat’s, seemed to spite the world because she 
was so ugly. Mademoiselle Virginie, brought up, like her 
younger sister, under the domestic rule of her mother, had 


240 


SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET \ 


reached the age of eight-and-twenty. Youth mitigated the 
graceless effect which her likeness to her mother sometimes 
gave to her features, but maternal austerity had endowed her 
with two great qualities which made up for everything. She 
was patient and gentle. Mademoiselle Augustine, who was but 
just eighteen, was not like either her father or her mother. 
She was one of those daughters whose total absence of any 
physical affinity with their parents makes one believe in the 
adage : God gives children. Augustine was little, or, to 
describe her more truly, delicately made. Full of gracious 
candor, a man of the world could have found no fault in the 
charming girl beyond a certain meanness of gesture or vul- 
garity of attitude, and sometimes a want of ease. Her silent 
and placid face was full of the transient melancholy which 
comes over all young girls who are too weak to dare to resist 
their mother’s will. 

The two sisters, always plainly dressed, could not gratify 
the innate vanity of womanhood but by a luxury of cleanliness 
which became them wonderfully, and made them harmonize 
with the polished counters and the shining shelves, on which 
the old manservant never left a speck of dust, and with the 
old-world simplicity of all they saw about them. As their 
style of living compelled them to find the elements of happi- 
ness in persistent work, Augustine and Virginie had hitherto 
always satisfied their mother, who secretly prided herself on 
the perfect characters of her two daughters. It is easy to 
imagine the results of the training they had received. 
Brought up to a commercial life, accustomed to hear nothing 
but dreary arguments and calculations about trade, having 
studied nothing but grammar, bookkeeping, a little Bible- 
history, and the history of France in Le Ragois, and never 
reading any book but those their mother would sanction, their 
ideas had not acquired much scope. They knew perfectly 
how to keep house ; they were familiar with the prices of 
things; they understood the difficulty of amassing money; 


SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET. 


241 


they were economical, and had a great respect for the qualities 
that make a man of business. Although their father was rich, 
they were as skilled in darning as in embroidery ; their mother 
often talked of having them taught to cook, so that they 
might know how to order a dinner and scold a cook with due 
knowledge. They knew nothing of the pleasures of the 
world; and, seeing how their parents spent their exemplary 
lives, they very rarely suffered their eyes to wander beyond 
the walls of their hereditary home, which to their mother was 
the whole universe. The meetings to which family anniver- 
saries gave rise filled in the future of earthly joy to them. 

When the great drawing-room on the second floor was to 
be prepared to receive company — Madame Roquin, a Demoi- 
selle Chevrel, fifteen months younger than her cousin, and 
bedecked with diamonds ; young Rabourdin, employed in the 
Finance Office ; Monsieur Cesar Birotteau, the rich perfumer, 
and his wife, known as Madame Cesar ; Monsieur Camusot, 
the richest silk mercer in the Rue des Bourdonnais, with his 
father-in-law, Monsieur Cardot, two or three old bankers, and 
some immaculate ladies — the arrangements, made necessary 
by the way in which everything was packed away — the plate, 
the Dresden china, the candlesticks, and the glass — made a 
variety in the monotonous lives of the three women, who came 
and went and exerted themselves as nuns would to receive 
their bishop. Then, in the evening, when all three were 
tired out with having wiped, rubbed, unpacked, and arranged 
all the gauds of the festival, as the girls helped their mother 
to undress, Madame Guillaume would say to them, “ Children, 
we have done nothing to-day.’* 

When, on very great occasions, “ the portress nun ” allowed 
dancing, restricting the games of boston, whist, and back- 
gammon within the limits of her bedroom, such a concession 
was accounted as the most unhoped felicity, and made them 
happier than going to the great balls, to two or three of which 
Guillaume would take the girls at the time of the Carnival. 

16 


242 SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET. 

And once a year the worthy draper gave an entertainment, 
when he spared no expense. However rich and fashionable 
the persons invited might be, they were careful not to be 
absent ; for the most important houses on the Exchange had 
recourse to the immense credit, the fortune, or the time- : 
honored experience of Monsieur Guillaume. Still, the excel- \ 
lent merchant’s two daughters did not benefit as much as 
might be supposed by the lessons the world has to offer to 
young spirits. At these parties, which were indeed set down 
in the ledger to the credit of the house, they wore dresses the 
shabbiness of which made them blush. Their style of dancing 
was not in any way remarkable, and their mother’s surveil- 
lance did not allow of their holding any conversation with 
their partners beyond Yes and No. Also, the law of the old 
sign of the Cat and Racket commanded that they should be 
home by eleven o’clock, the hour when balls and fetes begin 
to be lively. Thus their pleasures, which seemed to conform 
very fairly to their father’s position, were often made insipid 
by circumstances which were part of the family habits and 
principles. 

As to their usual life, one remark will sufficiently paint it. 
Madame Guillaume required her daughters to be dressed very 
early in the morning, to come down every day at the same 
hour, and she ordered their employments with monastic regu- 
larity. Augustine, however, had been gifted by chance with 
a spirit lofty enough to feel the emptiness of such a life. Her 
blue eyes would sometimes be raised as if to pierce the depths 
of that gloomy staircase and those damp warerooms. After 
sounding the profound cloistral silence, she seemed to be 
listening to remote, inarticulate revelations of the life of pas- 
sion, which accounts feelings as of higher value than things. 
And at such moments her cheek would flush, her idle hands 
would lay the muslin sewing on the polished oak counter, and 
presently her mother would say in a voice, of which even the 
softest tones were sour: “Augustine, my treasure, what are 


SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET 


243 


you thinking about?” It is possible that two romances dis- 
covered by Augustine in the cupboard of a cook Madame 
Guillaume had lately discharged — “ Hippolyte Comte de 
Douglas” and “ Le Comte de Comminges ” — may have con- 
tributed to develop the ideas of the young girl, who had de- 
voured them in secret, during the long nights of the past 
winter. 

And so Augustine’s expression of vague longing, her gentle 
voice, her jasmine skin, and her blue eyes had lighted in poor 
Lebas’ soul a flame as ardent as it was reverent. From an 
easily understood caprice, Augustine felt no affection for the 
orphan ; perhaps because she did not know that he loved her. 
On the other hand, the senior apprentice, with his long legs, 
his chestnut hair, his big hands and powerful frame, had found 
a secret admirer in Mademoiselle Virginie, who, in spite of 
her dower of fifty thousand crowns, had as yet no suitor. 
Nothing could be more natural than these two passions at 
cross-purposes, born in the silence of the dingy store, as violets 
bloom in the depths of a wood. The mute and constant looks 
which made the young people’s eyes meet by sheer need of 
change in the midst of persistent work and cloistered peace, 
was sure, sooner or later, to give rise to feelings of love. The 
habit of seeing always the same face leads insensibly to our 
reading there the qualities of the soul, and at last effaces all 
its defects. 

“At the pace at which that man goes, our girls will soon 
have to go on their knees to a suitor ! ” said Monsieur Guil- 
laume to himself, as he read the first decree by which Napo- 
leon drew in advance on the conscript classes. 

From that day the old merchant, grieved at seeing his 
eldest daughter fade, remembered how he had married Made- 
moiselle Chevrel under much the same circumstances as those 
of Joseph Lebas and Virginie. A good bit of business, to 
marry off his daughter, and discharge a sacred debt by repay- 
ing to an orphan the benefit he had formerly received from his 


244 


SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET 


predecessor under similar conditions ! Joseph Lebas, who 
was now three-and-thirty, was aware of the obstacle which a 
difference of fifteen years placed between Augustine and him- 
self. Being also too clear-sighted not to understand Monsieur 
Guillaume's purpose, he knew his inexorable principles well 
enough to feel sure that the second would never marry before 
the elder. So the hapless assistant, whose heart was as warm 
as his legs were long and his chest deep, suffered in silence. 

This was the state of affairs in the tiny republic which, in 
the heart of the Rue Saint-Denis, was not unlike a dependency 
of La Trappe.* But to give a full account of events as well as 
of feelings, it is needful to go back to some months before the 
scene with which this story opens. At dusk one evening, a 
young man, passing the darkened store of the Cat and Racket, 
had paused for a moment to gaze at a picture which might 
have arrested every painter in the world. The store was not 
yet lighted, and was as a dark cave, beyond which the dining- 
room was visible. A hanging-lamp shed the yellow light 
which lends such charm to pictures of the Dutch school. The 
white linen, the silver, the cut-glass, were brilliant accessories, 
and made more picturesque by strong contrasts of light and 
shade. The figures of the head of the family and his wife, the 
faces of the apprentices, and the pure form of Augustine, near 
whom a fat, chubby-cheeked maid was standing, composed so 
strange a group ; the heads were so singular, and every face 
had so candid an expression ; it was so easy to read the 
peace, the silence, the modest way of life in this family, that, 
to an artist accustomed to render nature, there was something 
hopeless in any attempt to depict this scene, come upon by 
chance. The stranger was a young painter, who, seven years 
before, had gained the first prize for painting. He had now 
just come back from Rome. His soul, full-fed with poetry; 
his eyes, satiated with Raphael and Michael Angelo, thirsted 
for real nature after long dwelling in the pompous land where 
* A Cisterian abbey of severe asceticism. 


SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET. 


245 


art has everywhere left something grandiose. Right or wrong, 
this was his personal feeling. His heart, which had long been 
a prey to the fire of Italian passion, craved one of those 
modest and meditative maidens whom in Rome he had unfor- 
tunately seen only in paintings. From the enthusiasm pro- 
duced in his excited fancy by the living picture before him, 
he naturally passed to a profound admiration for the principal 
figure ; Augustine seemed to be pensive, and did not eat ; by 
the arrangement of the lamp the light fell full on her face, and 
her bust seemed to move in a circle of fire, which threw up the 
shape of her head and illuminated it with almost supernatural 
effect. The artist involuntarily compared her to an exiled 
angel, dreaming of heaven. An almost unknown emotion, 
a limpid, seething love flooded his heart. After remaining a 
minute, overwhelmed by the weight of his ideas, he tore him- 
self from his bliss, went home, ate nothing, and could not 
sleep. 

The next day he went to his studio, and did not come out 
of it till he had placed on canvas the magic of the scene of 
which the memory had, in a sense, made him a devotee ; his 
happiness was incomplete till he should possess a faithful por- 
trait of his idol. He went many times past the house of the 
Cat and Racket ; he even ventured in once or twice, under a 
disguise, to get a closer view of the bewitching creature that 
Madame Guillaume covered with her wing. For eight whole 
months, devoted to his love and to his brush, he was lost to 
the sight of his most intimate friends, forgetting the world, 
the theatre, poetry, music, and all his dearest habits. One 
morning Girodet broke through all the barriers with which 
artists are familiar, and which they know how to evade, went 
into his room, and woke him by asking: “What are you 
going to send to the Salon ? ” The artist grasped his friend’s 
hand, dragged him off to the studio, uncovered a small easel 
picture and a portrait. After a long and eager study of the 
two masterpieces, Girodet threw fiimself on hi$ comrade’s 


246 


SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET 


neck and hugged him, without speaking a word. His feelings 
could only be expressed as he felt them — soul to soul. 

‘‘You are in love?” said Girodet. 

They both knew that the finest portraits by Titian, Raphael, 
and Leonardo da Vinci were the outcome of the enthusiastic 
sentiments by which, indeed, under various conditions, every 
masterpiece is engendered. The artist only bent his head in 
reply. 

“ How happy are you to be able to be in love, here, after 
coming back from Italy ! But I do not advise you to send 
such works as these to the Salon,” the great painter went on. 
“You see, these two works will not be appreciated. Such 
true coloring, such prodigious work, cannot yet be under- 
stood ; the public is not accustomed to such depths. The 
pictures we paint, my dear fellow, are mere screens. We 
should do better to turn rhymes, and translate the antique 
poets ! There is more glory to be looked for there than from 
our luckless canvasses ! ” 

Notwithstanding this charitable advice, the two pictures 
were exhibited. The “ Interior ” made a revolution in paint- 
ing. It gave birth to the pictures of genre which pour into 
all our exhibitions in such prodigious quantity that they might 
be supposed to be produced by machinery. As to the portrait, 
few artists have forgotten that lifelike work ; and the public, 
which as a body is sometimes discerning, awarded it the crown 
which Girodet himself had hung over it. The two pictures 
were surrounded by a vast throng. They fought for places, 
as women say. Speculators and moneyed men would have 
covered the canvas with double Napoleons, but the artist 
obstinately refused to sell or to make replicas. An enormous 
sum was offered him for the right of engraving them, but the 
printsellers were not more favored than the amateurs. 

Though these incidents occupied the world, they were not 
of a nature to penetrate the recesses of the monastic solitude 
in the Rue Saint-Denis. However, when paying a visit tp 


SIGN OF THE CAT AND FA CHET. 


247 


Madame Guillaume, the notary’s wife spoke of the exhibition 
before Augustine, of whom she was very fond, and explained its 
purpose. Madame Roquin’s gossip naturally inspired Augus- 
tine with a wish to see the pictures, and with courage enough 
to ask her cousin secretly to take her to the Louvre. Her 
cousin succeeded in the negotiations she opened with Madame 
Guillaume for permission to release the young girl for two hours 
from her dull labors. Augustine was thus able to make her way 
through the crowd to see the crowned work. A fit of trem- 
bling shook her like an aspen leaf as she recognized herself. 
She was terrified, and looked about her to find Madame 
Roquin, from whom she had been separated by a tide of 
people. At that moment her frightened eyes fell on the im- 
passioned face of the young painter. She at once recalled 
the figure of a loiterer whom, being curious, she had fre- 
quently observed, believing him to be a new neighbor. 

“ You see how love has inspired me,” said the artist in the 
timid creature’s ear, and she stood in dismay at the words. 

She found supernatural courage to enable her to push 
through the crowd and join her cousin, who was still strug- 
gling with the mass of people that hindered her from getting 
to the picture. 

“You will be stifled ! ” cried Augustine. “ Let us go.” 

But there are moments, at the Salon, when two women are 
not always free to direct their steps through the galleries. 
By the irregular course to which they were compelled by the 
press, Mademoiselle Guillaume and her cousin were pushed 
to within a few steps of the second picture. Chance thus 
brought them, both together, to where they could easily see 
the canvas made famous by fashion, for once in agreement 
with talent. Madame Roquin’s exclamation of surprise was 
lost in the hubbub and buzz of the crowd ; Augustine invol- 
untarily shed tears at the sight of this wonderful study. 
Then, by an almost unaccountable impulse, she laid her finger 
on her lips, as she perceived quite near her the ecstatic face 


248 


SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET. 


of the young painter. The stranger replied by a nod, and 
pointed to Madame Roquin, as a spoil-sport, to show Augus- 
tine that he had understood. This pantomime struck the 
young girl like hot coals on her flesh ; she felt quite guilty as 
she perceived that there was a compact between herself and 
the artist. The suffocating heat, the dazzling sight of beauti- 
ful dresses, the bewilderment produced in Augustine’s brain 
by the truth of coloring, the multitude of living or painted 
figures, the profusion of gilt frames, gave her a sense of in- 
toxication which doubled her alarms. She would perhaps 
have fainted if an unknown rapture had not surged up in her 
heart to vivify her whole being, in spite of this chaos of sen- 
sations. She nevertheless believed herself to be under the 
power of the devil, of whose awful snares she had been 
warned by the thundering words of preachers. This moment 
was to her like a moment of madness. She found herself ac- 
companied to her cousin’s carriage by the young man, radiant 
with joy and love. Augustine, a prey to an agitation new to 
her experience, an intoxication which seemed to abandon her 
to nature, listened to the eloquent voice of her heart, and 
looked again and again at the young painter, betraying the 
emotion that came over her. Never had the bright rose of 
her cheeks shown in stronger contrast with the whiteness of 
her skin. The artist saw her beauty in all its bloom, her 
maiden modesty in all its glory. She herself felt a sort of 
rapture mingled with terror at thinking that her presence had 
brought happiness to him whose name was on every lip, and 
whose talent lent immortality to transient scenes. She was 
loved ! It was impossible to doubt it. When she no longer 
saw the artist, these simple words still echoed in her ear: 
“You see how love has inspired me ! ” And the throbs of 
her heart, as they grew deeper, seemed a pain, her heated blood 
revealed so many unknown forces in her being. She affected 
a severe headache to avoid replying to her cousin’s questions 
concerning the pictures ; but on their return Madame Roquin 


SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET. 


249 


could not forbear from speaking to Madame Guillaume of the 
fame that had fallen on the house of the Cat and Racket, and 
Augustine quaked in every limb as she heard her mother say 
that she should go to the Salon to see her house there. The 
young girl again declared herself suffering, and obtained leave 
to go to bed. 

“ That is what comes of sight-seeing,” exclaimed Monsieur 
Guillaume — “ a headache. And is it so very amusing to see 
in a picture what you can see any day in your own street ? 
Don’t talk to me of your artists ! Like writers, they are a 
starveling crew. Why the devil need they choose my house 
to flout it in their pictures ? ” 

“ It may help to sell a few ells more of cloth,” said Joseph 
Lebas. 

This remark did not protect art and thought from being 
condemned once again before the judgment-seat of trade. As 
may be supposed, these speeches did not infuse much hope 
into Augustine, who, during the night, gave herself up to the 
first meditations of love. The events of the day were like a 
dream, which it was joy to recall to her mind. She was 
initiated into the fears, the hopes, the remorse, all the ebb 
and flow of feeling which could not fail to toss a heart so 
simple and so timid as hers. What a void she perceived in 
this gloomy house ! What a treasure she found in her soul ! 
To be the wife of a genius, to share his glory ! What ravages 
must such a vision make in the heart of a girl brought up 
among such a family ! What hopes must it raise in a young 
creature who, in the midst of sordid elements, had pined for a 
life of elegance ! A sunbeam had fallen into the prison. 
Augustine was suddenly in love. So many of her feelings 
were soothed that she succumbed without reflection. At 
eighteen does not love hold a prism between the world and 
the eyes of a young girl ? She was incapable of suspecting 
the hard facts which result from the union of a loving woman 
with a man of imagination, and she believed herself called to 


250 


SIGN OF THE CAT AND FA CHET. 


make him happy, not seeing any disparity between herself and 
him. To her the future would be as the present. When, 
next day, her father and mother returned from the Salon, 
their dejected faces proclaimed some disappointment. In the 
first place, the painter had removed the two pictures; and 
then Madame Guillaume had lost her cashmere shawl. But 
the news that the pictures had disappeared from the walls 
since her visit revealed to Augustine a delicacy of sentiment 
which a woman can always appreciate, even by instinct. 

On the morning when, on his way home from a ball, 
Theodore de Sommervieux — for this was the name which fame 
had stamped on Augustine’s heart— had been squirted on by the 
apprentices while awaiting the appearance of his artless little 
friend, who certainly did not know that he was there, the 
lovers had seen each other for the fourth time only since their 
meeting at the Salon. The difficulties which the rule of the 
house placed in the way of the painter’s ardent nature gave 
added violence to his passion for Augustine. 

How could he get near to a young girl seated in a counting- 
house between two such women as Mademoiselle Virginie and 
Madame Guillaume? How could he correspond with her 
when her mother never left her side? Ingenious, as lovers 
are, to imagine woes, Theodore saw a rival in one of the as- 
sistants, to whose interests he supposed the others to be devoted. 
If he should evade these sons of Argus, he would yet be 
wrecked under the stern eyes of the old draper or of Madame 
Guillaume. The very vehemence of his passion hindered the 
young painter from hitting on the ingenious expedients 
which, in prisoners and in lovers, seem to be the last effort of 
intelligence spurred by a wild craving for liberty or bv the 
fire of love. Theodore wandered about the neighborhood 
with the restlessness of a madman, as though movement 
might inspire him with some device. After racking his 
imagination, it occurred to him to bribe the blowsy waiting- 
maid with gold. Thus a few notes were exchanged at long 


SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET. 


251 


intervals during the fortnight following the ill-starred morning 
when Monsieur Guillaume and Theodore had so scrutinized 
one another. At the present moment the young couple had 
agreed to see each other at a certain hour of the day, and on 
Sunday, at Saint-Leu, during mass and vespers. Augustine 
had sent her dear Theodore a list of the relations and friends 
of the family, to whom the young painter tried to get access, 
in the hope of interesting, if it were possible, in his love 
affairs, one of these souls absorbed in money and trade, 
to whom a genuine passion must appear a quite monstrous 
speculation, a thing unheard of. Nothing, meanwhile, was 
altered at the sign of the Cat and Racket. If Augustine was 
absent-minded, if, against all obedience to the domestic code, 
she stole up to her room to make signals by means of a jar of 
flowers, if she sighed, if she were lost in thought, no one 
observed it, not even her mother. This will cause some sur- 
prise to those who have entered into the spirit of the house- 
hold, where an idea tainted with poetry would be in startling 
contrast to persons and things, where no one could venture 
on a gesture or a look which would not be seen and analyzed. 
Nothing, however, cculd be more natural; the quiet barque 
that navigated the stormy waters of the Paris Exchange, under 
the flag of the Cat and Racket, was just now in the toils of 
one of these tempests which, returning periodically, might be 
termed equinoctial. For the last fortnight the five men form- 
ing the crew, with Madame Guillaume and Mademoiselle 
Virginie, had been devoting themselves to the hard labor, 
known as stock-taking. 

Every bale was turned over, and the length verified to ascer- 
tain the exact value of the remnant. The ticket attached to 
each parcel was carefully examined to see at what time the 
piece had been bought. The retail price was fixed. Monsieur 
Guillaume, always on his feet, his pen behind his ear, was like 
a captain commanding the working of the ship. His sharp 
tones, spoken through a trap-door, to inquire into the depths 


252 


SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET. 


of the hold in the cellar-store, gave utterance to the barbarous 
formulas of trade-jargon, which find expression only in a pri- 
vate cypher. 

“ How much H. N. Z. ? ” “All sold.” “ What is left of 
Q. X.?” “Two ells.” “At what price?” “Fifty-five 
three.” “ Set down A. at three, with all of J. J., all of M. P., 
and what is left of V. D. O.” A hundred other injunctions 
equally intelligible were spouted over the counters like verses 
of modern poetry, quoted by romantic spirits, to excite each 
other’s enthusiasm for one of their poets. In the evening 
Guillaume, shut up with his assistant and his wife, balanced 
his accounts, carried on the balance, wrote to debtors in 
arrears, and made out bills. All three were busy over this 
enormous labor, of which the result could be stated on a 
sheet of foolscap, proving to the head of the house that there 
was so much to the good in hard cash, so much in goods, so 
much in bills and notes ; that he did not owe a sou ; that a 
hundred or two hundred thousand francs were owing to him ; 
that the capital had been increased ; that the farm-lands, the 
houses, or the investments were extended, or repaired, or 
doubled. Whence it became necessary to begin again with 
increased ardor, to accumulate more crown-pieces, without its 
ever entering the brain of these laborious ants to ask — “ To 
what end ? ” 

Favored by this annual tormoil, the happy Augustine escaped 
the investigations of her Argus-eyed relations. At last, one 
Saturday evening, the stock-taking was finished. The figures 
of the sum-total showed a row of 0’s long enough to allow 
Guillaume for once to relax the stern rule as to dessert which 
reigned throughout the year. The shrewd old draper rubbed 
his hands, and allowed his assistants to remain at table. The 
members of the crew had hardly swallowed their thimbleful 
of some home-made liqueur, when the rumble of a carriage 
was heard. The family party were going to see “ Gen- 
drillon” at the Varies, while the two younger apprentices 


SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET. 


253 


each received a crown of six francs, with permission to go 
wherever they chose, provided they were in by midnight. 

Notwithstanding this debauch, the old cloth-merchant was 
shaving himself at six next morning, put on his maroon- 
colored coat, of which the glowing lights afforded him peren- 
nial enjoyment, fastened a pair of gold buckles on the knee- 
straps of his ample satin breeches; and then, at about seven 
o’clock, while all were still sleeping in the house, he made his 
way to the little office adjoining the store on the first floor. 
Daylight came in through a window, fortified by iron bars, 
and looking out on a small yard surrounded by such black 
walls that it was very like a well. The old merchant opened 
the iron-lined shutters, which were so familiar to him, and 
threw up the lower half of the sash window. The icy air of 
the courtyard came in to cool the hot atmosphere of the little 
room, full of the odor peculiar to offices. 

The merchant remained standing, his hand resting on the 
greasy arm of a large cane-seated chair lined with morocco, 
of which the original hue had disappeared ; he seemed to 
hesitate as to seating himself. He looked with affection at 
the double desk, where his wife’s seat, opposite his own, was 
fitted into a little niche in the wall. He contemplated the 
numbered boxes, the files, the implements, the cash-box — 
objects all of immemorial origin, and fancied himself in the 
room with the shade of Master Chevrel. He even pulled out 
the high stool on which he had once sat in the presence of his 
departed master. This stool, covered with black leather, the 
horse-hair showing at every corner — as it had long done, with- 
out, however, coming out — he placed with a shaking hand on 
the very spot where his predecessor had put it, and then, with 
an emotion difficult to describe, he pulled a bell, which rang 
at the head of Joseph Lebas’ bed. When this decisive blow 
had been struck, the old man, for whom, no doubt, these 
reminiscences were too much, took up three or four bills of 
exchange, and looked at them without seeing them. 


254 


SIGN' OP THE CAT AND PACKET 


Suddenly Joseph Lebas stood before him. 

“ Sit down there,” said Guillaume, pointing to the stool. 

As the old master draper had never yet bade his assistant 
be seated in his presence, Joseph Lebas was startled. 

“ What do you think of these notes? ” asked Guillaume. 

“They will never be paid.” 

“Why?” 

“ Well, I heard that the day before yesterday Etienne & 
Co. had made their payments in gold.” 

“ Oh, oh ! ” said the draper. “ Well, one must be very ill 
to show one’s bile. Let us speak of something else. Joseph, 
the stock-taking is done.” 

“ Yes, monsieur, and the dividend is one of the best you 
have ever made.” 

“ Do not use new-fangled words. Say the profits, Joseph. 
Do you know, my boy, that this result is partly owing to you? 
And I do not intend to pay you a salary any longer. Madame 
Guillaume has suggested to me to take you into partnership. 
* Guillaume & Lebas ; ’ will not that make a good business 
name? We might add ‘and Co.’ to round off the firm’s 
signature.” 

Tears rose to the eyes of Joseph Lebas, who tried to hide 
them. 

“ Oh, Monsieur Guillaume, how have I deserved such kind- 
ness? I only do my duty. It was so much already that you 
should take an interest in a poor orph ” 

He was brushing the cuff of his left sleeve with his right 
hand, and dared not look at the old man, who smiled as he 
thought that this modest young fellow no doubt needed, as 
he had needed once on a time, some encouragement to com- 
plete his explanation. 

“To be sure,” said Virginie’s father, “you do not alto- 
gether deserve this favor, Joseph. You have not so much 
confidence in me as I have in you.” (The young man looked 
up quickly.) “ You know all the secrets of the cash-box. For 


SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET. 


255 


the last two years I have told you of almost all my concerns. 
I have sent you to travel in our goods. In short, I have 
nothing on my conscience as regards you. But you — you 
have a soft place, and you have never breathed a word of it.” 
Joseph Lebas blushed. “ Ah, ha!” cried Guillaume, “so 
you thought you could deceive an old fox like me ? When 
you knew that I had scented the Lecocq bankruptcy?” 

“What, monsieur?” replied Joseph Lebas, looking at his 
master as keenly as his master looked at him, “ you knew that 
I was in love ? ’ ’ 

“I know everything, you rascal,” said the worthy and cun- 
ning old merchant, pulling the assistant’s ear. “And I for- 
give you — I did the same myself.” 

“And you will give her to me?” 

“Yes — with fifty thousand crowns ; and I will leave you as 
much by will, and we will start on our new career under the 
name of a new firm. We will do good business yet, my 
boy ! ” added the old man, getting up and flourishing his 
arms. “ I tell you, son-in-law, there is nothing like trade. 
Those who ask what pleasure is to be found in it are simple- 
tons. To be on the scent of a good bargain, to hold your 
own on ’Change, to watch as anxiously as at the gaming- 
table whether Etienne & Co. will fail or not, to see a regiment 
of Guards march past all dressed in your cloth, to trip your 
neighbor up — honestly, of course ! — to make the goods cheaper 
than others can ; then to carry out an undertaking which you 
have planned, which begins, grows, totters, and succeeds ! to 
know the workings of every house of business as well as a 
minister of police, so as never to make a mistake ; to hold up 
your head in the midst of wrecks, to have friends by corre- 
spondence in every manufacturing town ; is not that a per- 
petual game, Joseph ? That is life, that is ! I shall die in 
that harness, like old Chevrel, but taking it easy now, all the 
same.” 

In th<? heat of his eager rhetoric, old Guillaume had scarcely 


256 


SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET. 


looked at his assistant, who was weeping copiously. “ Why, 
Joseph, my poor boy, what is the matter ? ” 

“ Oh, I love her so ! Monsieur Guillaume, that my heart 
fails me ; I believe * ’ 

“Well, well, boy,” said the old man, touched, “you are 
happier than you know, by Gad 1 For she loves you. I 
know it.” 

And he blinked his little green eyes as he looked at the 
young man. 

“ Mademoiselle Augustine ! Mademoiselle Augustine 1 ” 
exclaimed Joseph Lebas in his rapture. 

He was about to rush out of the room when he felt himself 
clutched by a hand of iron, and his astonished master spun 
him round in front of him once more. 

“What has Augustine to do with this matter?” he asked, 
in a voice which instantly froze the luckless Joseph. 

“Is it not she that — that — I love?” stammered the as- 
sistant. 

Much put out by his own want of perspicacity, Guillaume 
sat down again, and rested his long head in his hands to con- 
sider the perplexing situation in which he found himself. 
Joseph Lebas, quite shamefaced and in utter despair, remained 
standing. 

“Joseph,” the draper said with frigid dignity, “I was 
speaking of Virginie. Love cannot be made to order, I 
know. I know, too, that you can be trusted. We will forget 
all this. I will not let Augustine marry before Virginie. 
Your interest will be ten per cent.” 

The young man, to whom love gave I know not what power 
of courage and eloquence, clasped his hand, and spoke in his 
turn — spoke for a quarter of an hour, with so much warmth 
and feeling, that he altered the situation. If the question 
had been a matter of business, the old tradesman would have 
had fixed principles to guide his decision ; but, tossed a thou- 
sand miles from commerce, on the ocean of sentiment, with- 


SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET 


257 


out a compass, he floated, as he told himself, undecided in 
the face of such an unexpected event. Carried away by his 
fatherly kindness, he began to beat about the bush. 

“ Deuce take it, Joseph, you must know that there are ten 
years between my two children. Mademoiselle Chevrel was 
no beauty, still she has had nothing to complain of in me. 
Do as I did. Come, come, don’t cry. Can you be so silly? 
What is to be done ? It can be managed perhaps. There is 
always some way out of a scrape. And we men are not always 
devoted Celadons to our wives — you understand? Madame 
Guillaume is very pious. Come. By Gad, boy, give your 
arm to Augustine this morning as we go to mass.” 

These were the phrases spoken at random by the old draper, 
and their conclusion made the lover happy. He was already 
thinking of a friend of his as a match for Mademoiselle Vir- 
ginie, as he went out of the smoky office, pressing his future 
father-in-law’s hand, after saying with a knowing look that all 
would turn out for the best. 

“ What will Madame Guillaume say to it?” was the idea 
that greatly troubled the worthy merchant when he found 
himself alone. 

At breakfast Madame Guillaume and Virginie, to whom the 
draper had not as yet confided his disappointment, cast mean- 
ing glances at Joseph Lebas, who was extremely embarrassed. 
The young assistant’s bashfulness commended him to his 
mother-in-law’s good graces. The matron became so cheerful 
that she smiled as she looked at her husband, and allowed her- 
self some little pleasantries of time-honored acceptance in such 
simple families. She wondered whether Joseph or Virginie 
were the taller, to ask them to compare their height. This 
preliminary fooling brought a cloud to the master’s brow, and 
he even made such a point of decorum that he desired Augustine 
to take the assistant’s arm on their way to Saint-Leu. Madame 
Guillaume, surprised at this manly delicacy, honored her hus- 
band with a nod of approval. So the procession left the house 
17 


258 


SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET 


in such order as to suggest no suspicious meaning to the neigh* 
bors. 

“ Does it not seem to you, Mademoiselle Augustine,” said 
the assistant, and he trembled, “ that the wife of a merchant 
whose credit is as good as Monsieur Guillaume’s, for instance, 
might enjoy herself a little more than madame your mother 
does? Might wear diamonds — or keep a carriage? For my 
part, if I were to marry, I should be glad to take all the work 
and see my wife happy. I would not put her into the count- 
ing-house. In the drapery business, you see, a woman is not 
so necessary now as formerly. Monsieur Guillaume was quite 
right to act as he did — and, beside, his wife liked it. But so 
long as a woman knows how to turn her hand to the book- 
keeping, the correspondence, the retail business, the orders, 
and her housekeeping, so as not to sit idle, that is enough. 
At seven o’clock, when the store is shut, I shall take my plea- 
sures, go to the play, and into company. But you are not 
listening to me.” 

“Yes, indeed, Monsieur Joseph. What do you think of 
painting? That is a fine calling.” 

“ Yes. I know a master house-painter, Monsieur Lourdois. 
He is well-to-do.” 

Thus conversing, the family reached the church of Saint- 
Leu. There Madame Guillaume reasserted her rights, and, for 
the first time, placed Augustine next to herself, Virginie taking 
her place on the fourth chair next to Lebas. During the 
sermon all went well between Augustine and Theodore, who, 
standing behind a pillar, worshiped his Madonna with fervent 
devotion ; but at the elevation of the host, Madame Guillaume 
discovered, rather late, that her daughter Augustine was hold- 
ing her prayer-book upside down. She was about to speak to 
her strongly, when, lowering her veil, she interrupted her own 
devotions to look in the direction where her daughter’s eyes 
found attraction. By the help of her spectacles she saw the 
young artist, whose fashionable elegance seemed to proclaim 


S/ON OF TI/E CAT AND RACKET. 259 

him a cavalry officer on leave rather than a tradesman of the 
neighborhood. It is difficult to conceive of the state of violent 
agitation in which Madame Guillaume found herself — she, who 
flattered herself on having brought up her daughters to perfec- 
tion — on discovering in Augustine a clandestine passion of 
which her prudery and ignorance exaggerated the perils. She 
believed her daughter to be cankered to the core. 

“ Hold your book right way up, miss,” she muttered in a 
low voice, tremulous with wrath. She snatched away the tell- 
tale prayer-book and returned it with the letter-press right 
side up. “ Do not allow your eyes to look anywhere but at 
your prayers,” she added, “ or I shall have something to say 
to you. Your father and I will talk to you after church.” 

These words came like a thunderbolt on poor Augustine. 
She felt faint ; but, torn between the distress she felt and the 
dread of causing a commotion in church, she bravely con- 
cealed her anguish. It was, however, easy to discern the 
stormy state of her soul from the trembling of her prayer- 
book, and the tears which dropped on every page she turned. 
From the furious glare shot at him by Madame Guillaume the 
artist saw the peril into which his love affair had fallen ; he 
went out, with a raging soul, determined to venture all. 

“Go to your room miss!” said Madame Guillaume, on 
their return home; “we will send for you, but take care not 
to quit it.” 

The conference between the husband and wife was con- 
ducted so secretly that at first nothing was heard of it. Vir- 
ginie, however, who had tried to give her sister courage by a 
variety of gentle remonstrances, carried her good-nature so 
far as to listen at the door of her mother’s bedroom where 
the discussion was held, to catch a word or two. The first 
time she went down to the lower floor she heard her father 
exclaim: “Then, madame, do you wish to kill your daughter?” 

“My poor dear!” said Virginie, in tears, “papa takes 
your part.” 


260 


SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET. 


“And what do they want to do to Theodore?” asked the 
innocent girl. 

Virginie, inquisitive, went down again ; but this time she 
stayed longer ; she learned that Joseph Lebas loved Augustine. 
It was written that on this memorable day, this house, 
generally so peaceful, should be a hell. Monsieur Guillaume 
brought Joseph Lebas to despair by telling him of Augustine’s 
love for a stranger. Lebas, who had advised his friend to 
become a suitor for Mademoiselle Virginie, saw all his hopes 
wrecked. Mademoiselle Virginie, overcome by hearing that 
Joseph had, in a way, refused her, had a sick headache. The 
dispute that had arisen from the discussion between Monsieur 
and Madame Guillaume, when, for the third time in their 
lives, they had been of antagonistic opinions, had shown 
itself in a terrible form. Finally, at half-past four in the 
afternoon, Augustine, pale, trembling, and with red eyes, was 
haled before her father and mother. The poor child artlessly 
related the too brief tale of her love. Reassured by a speech 
from her father, who promised to listen to her in silence, she 
gathered courage as she pronounced to her parents the name 
of Theodore de Sommervieux, with a mischievous little em- 
phasis on the aristocratic de. And, yielding to the unknown 
charm of talking of her feelings, she was brave enough to 
declare with innocent decision that she loved Monsieur de 
Sommervieux, that she had written to him, and she added, 
with tears in her eyes: “To sacrifice me to another man 
would make me wretched.” 

“But, Augustine, you cannot surely know what a painter 
is? ” cried her mother with horror. 

“ Madame Guillaume ! ” said the old man, compelling her 
to silence. “Augustine,” he went on, “artists are generally 
little better than beggars. They are too extravagant not to 
be always a bad sort. I served the late Monsieur Joseph 
Vernet, the late Monsieur Lekain, and the late Monsieur 
Noverre. Oh, if you could only know the tricks played on 


SIGN OF THE cat and racket. 


261 


poor Father Chevrel by that Monsieur Noverre, by the 
Chevalier de Saint-Georges, and especially by Monsieur 
Philidor ! They are a set of rascals ; I know them well ! 

\ They all have a gab and nice manners. Ah, your Monsieur 
i Sumer , Somm ” 

“De Sommervieux, papa.” 

j “Well, well, de Sommervieux, well and good. He can 
never have been half so sweet to you as Monsieur le Chevalier 
de Saint-Georges was to me the day I got a verdict of the 
consuls against him. And in those days they were gentlemen 
of quality.” 

“ But, father, Monsieur Theodore is of good family, and 
he wrote me that he is rich ; his father was called Chevalier 
de Sommervieux before the Revolution.” 

At these words Monsieur Guillaume looked at his terrible 
better half, who, like an angry woman, sat tapping the floor 
with her foot while keeping sullen silence ; she avoided even 
casting wrathful looks at Augustine, appearing to leave to 
Monsieur Guillaume the whole responsibility in so grave a 
matter, since her opinion was not listened to. Nevertheless, 
in spite of her apparent self-control, when she saw her husband 
giving way so mildly under a catastrophe which had no con- 
cern with business, she exclaimed — 

“Really, monsieur, you are so weak with your daughters! 
However ” 

The sound of a carriage, which stopped at the door, inter- 
rupted the rating which the old draper already quaked at. In 
a minute Madame Roquin was standing in the midde of the 
room, and looking at the actors in this domestic scene: “I 
know all, my dear cousin,” said she, with a patronizing air. 

Madame Roquin made the great mistake of supposing that 
a Paris notary’s wife could play the part of a favorite of 
fashion. 

“ I know all,” she repeated, “ and I have come into Noah’s 
Ark, like the dove, with the olive-branch. I read that alle- 


262 SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET. 

gory in the ‘Genius of Christianity/ ” she added, turning to 
Madame Guillaume ; “ the allusion ought to please you, 
cousin. Do you know,” she went on, smiling at Augustine, 
“that Monsieur de Sommervieux is a charming man? He 
gave me my portrait this morning, painted by a master's 
hand. It is worth at least six thousand francs.” And at 
these words she patted Monsieur Guillaume on the arm. The 
old draper could not help making a grimace with his lips, 
which was peculiar to him. 

“I know Monsieur de Sommervieux very well,” the Dove 
ran on. “He has come to my evenings these fourteen days 
past, and made them delightful. He has told me all his woes, 
and commissioned me to plead for him. I know since this 
morning that he adores Augustine, and he shall have her. 
Ah, cousin, do not shake your head in refusal. He will be 
created baron, I can tell you, and has just been made chev- 
alier of the Legion of Honor, by the Emperor himself, at the 
Salon. Roquin is now his lawyer, and knows all his affairs. 
Well ! Monsieur de Sommervieux has twelve thousand francs 
a year in good landed estate. Do you know that the father- 
in-law of such a man may get a rise in life — be mayor of his 
arrondissement, for instance. Have we not seen Monsieur 
Dupont become a count of the Empire and a senator, all 
because he went as mayor to congratulate the Emperor on his 
entry into Vienna? Oh, this marriage must take place ! For 
my part, I adore the dear young man. His behavior to Au- 
gustine is only met with in romances. Be easy, little one, 
you shall be happy, and every girl will wish she were in your 
place. Madame la Duchesse de Carigliano, who comes to 
my ‘At Homes/ raves about Monsieur de Sommervieux. Some 
spiteful people say she only comes to me to meet him ; as if 
a duchess of yesterday was doing too much honor to a Chevrel, 
whose family have been respected citizens these hundred years ! 

“ Augustine,” Madame Roquin went on, after a short pause, 
M I have seen the portrait. Heavens! How lovely it is! 


S/GN OF THE CAT AND RACKET, 


263 


Do you know that the Emperor wanted to have it? He 
laughed, and said to the deputy high constable that if there 
were many women like that at his court while all the kings 
visited it, he should have no difficulty about preserving the 
peace of Europe. Is not that a compliment ? M 

The tempests with which the day had begun were to re- 
semble those of nature, by ending in clear and serene weather. 
Madame Roquin displayed so much address in her harangue, 
she was able to touch so many strings in the dry hearts of 
Monsieur and Madame Guillaume, that at last she hit on one 
which she could work upon. At this strange period com- 
merce and finance were more than ever possessed by the crazy 
mania for seeking alliance with rank; and the generals of the 
Empire took full advantage of this desire. Monsieur Guil- 
laume, as a singular exception, opposed this deplorable crav- 
ing. His favorite axioms were that, to secure happiness, a 
woman must marry a man of her own class ; that every one 
was punished sooner or later for having climbed too high ; 
that love could so little endure under the worries of a house- 
hold, that both husband and wife needed sound good qualities 
to be happy ; that it would not do for one to be far in advance 
of the other, because, above everything, they must understand 
each other; if a man spoke Greek and his wife Latin, they 
might come to die of hunger. He had himself invented this 
sort of adage. And he compared such marriages to old- 
fashioned materials of mixed silk and wool, in which the silk 
always at last wore through the wool. Still, there is so much 
vanity at the bottom of man’s heart that the prudence of the 
pilot who steered the Cat and Racket so wisely gave way 
before Madame Roquin’s aggressive volubility. Austere 
Madame Guillaume was the first to see in her daughter’s affec- 
tion a reason for abdicating her principles and for consenting 
to receive Monsieur de Sommervieux, whom she promised 
herself she would put under severe inquisition. 

The old draper went to look for Joseph Lebas, and inform 


264 


SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET. 


him of the state of affairs. At half-past six, the dining-room 
immortalized by the artist saw, united under its skylight, Mon- 
sieur and Madame Roquin, the young painter and his charm- 
ing Augustine, Joseph .Lebas, who found his happiness in 
patience, and Mademoiselle Virginie, convalescent from her 
headache. Monsieur and Madame Guillaume saw in per- 
spective both their children married, and the fortunes of the 
Cat and Racket once more in skillful hands. Their satisfaction 
was at its height when, at dessert, Theodore made them a 
present of the wonderful picture which they had failed to see, 
representing the interior of the old store, and to which they 
all owed so much happiness. 

“ Isn’t it pretty! ” cried Guillaume. “And to think that 
any one would pay thirty thousand francs for that ! ” 

“ Because you can see my lappets in it,” said Madame 
Guillaume. 

“And the cloth unrolled ! ” added Lebas ; “ you might take 
it up in your hand.” 

“Drapery always comes out well,” replied the painter. 
“ We should be only too happy, we modern artists, if we could 
touch the perfection of antique drapery.” 

“So you like drapery!” cried old Guillaume. “Well, 
then, by Gad ! shake hands on that, my young friend. Since 
you can respect trade, we shall understand each other. And 
why should it be despised? The world began with trade, 
since Adam sold Paradise for an apple. He did not strike a 
good bargain though ! ” And the old man roared with honest 
laughter, encouraged by the champagne, which he sent round 
with a liberal hand. The band that covered the young artist’s 
eyes was so thick that he thought his future parents amiable. 
He was not above enlivening them by a few jests in the best 
taste. So he, too, pleased every one. In the evening, when 
the drawing-room, furnished with what Madame Guillaume 
called “everything handsome,” was deserted, and while she 
flitted from the table to the mantel-piece, from the candelabra 


SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET 


265 


to the tall candlesticks, hastily blowing out the wax-lights, the 
worthy draper, who was always clear-sighted when money was 
in question, called Augustine to him, and, seating her on his 
knee, spoke as follows : 

“ My dear child, you shall marry your Sommervieux since 
you insist ; you may, if you like, risk your capital in happiness. 
But I am not going to be hoodwinked by the thirty thousand 
francs to be made by spoiling good canvas. Money that is 
lightly earned is lightly spent. Did I not hear that hare- 
brained youngster declare this evening that money was made 
round that it might roll. If it is round for spendthrifts, it is 
flat for saving folk who pile it up. Now, my child, that fine 
gentleman talks of giving you carriages and diamonds ! He 
has money, let him spend it on you ; so be it. It is no con- 
cern of mine. But as to what I can give you, I will not have 
the crown-pieces I have picked up with so much toil wasted 
in carriages and frippery. Those who spend too fast never 
grow rich. A hundred thousand crowns, which is your for- 
tune, will not buy up Paris. It is all very well to look forward 
to a few hundred thousand francs to be yours some day ; I shall 
keep you waiting for them as long as possible, by Gad ! So I 
took your lover aside, and a man who managed the Lecocq 
bankruptcy had not much difficulty in persuading the artist to 
marry under a settlement of his wife’s money on herself. I 
will keep an eye on the marriage-contract to see that what he 
is to settle on you is safely tied up. So now, my child, I hope 
to be a grandfather, by Gad ! I will begin at once to lay up 
for my grandchildren ; but swear to me, here and now, never 
to sign any papers relating to money without my advice ; and 
if I go soon to join old Father Chevrel, promise to consult 
young Lebas, your brother-in-law.” 

“Yes, father, I swear it.” 

At these words, spoken in a gentle voice, the old man 
kissed his daughter on both cheeks. That night the lovers 
slept as soundly as Monsieur and Madame Guillaume. 


2G6 


SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET. 


Some few months after this memorable Sunday the high 
altar of Saint-Leu was the scene of two very different wed- 
dings. Augustine and Theodore appeared in all the radiance 
of happiness, their eyes beaming with love, dressed with ele- 
gance, while a fine carriage waited for them. Virginie, who 
had come in a good hired fly with the rest of the family, 
humbly followed her younger sister, dressed in the simplest 
fashion, like a shadow necessary to the harmony of the pic- 
ture. Monsieur Guillaume had exerted himself to the utmost 
in the church to get Virginie married before Augustine, but 
the priests, high and low, persisted in addressing the more 
elegant of the two brides. He heard some of his neighbors 
highly approving the good sense of Mademoiselle Virginie, 
who was making, as they said, the more substantial match, 
and remaining faithful to the neighborhood ; while they fired 
a few taunts, prompted by envy of Augustine, w r ho was marry- 
ing an artist and a man of rank ; adding, with a sort of dis- 
may, that if the Guillaumes were ambitious, there was an 
end to the business. An old fan-maker having remarked that 
such a prodigal would soon bring his wife to beggary, Father 
Guillaume prided himself in secret for his prudence in the 
matter of marriage-settlements. In the evening, after a splen- 
did ball, followed by one of those substantial suppers of 
which the memory is dying out in the present generation, 
Monsieur and Madame Guillaume remained in a fine house 
belonging to them in the Rue du Colombier, where the wed* 
ding had been held ; Monsieur and Madame Lebas returned 
in their hack to the old home in the Rue Saint-Denis, to steer 
the good ship Cat and Racket. The artist, intoxicated with 
happiness, carried off his beloved Augustine, and, eagerly 
lifting her out of their carriage when it reached the Rue des 
Trois-Frdres, led her to an apartment embellished by all the 
arts. 

The fever of passion which possessed Theodore made a 
year fly over the young couple without a single cloud to dim 


SIGN OF THE CAT AND FA CHET. 267 

the blue sky under which they lived. Life did not hang 
heavy on the lovers’ hands. Theodore lavished on every day 
inexhaustible witcheries* of enjoyment, and he delighted to 
vary the transports of passion by the soft languor of those 
hours of repose when souls soar so high that they seem to 
have forgotten all bodily union. Augustine was too happy 
for reflection ; she floated on an undulating tide of rapture ; 
she thought she could not do enough by abandoning herself 
to sanctioned and sacred married love ; simple and artless, 
she had no coquetry, no reserves, none of the dominion 
which a worldly-minded girl acquires over her husband by 
ingenious caprice j she loved too well to calculate for the 
future, and never imagined that so exquisite a life could come 
to an end. Happy in being her husband’s sole delight, she 
believed that her inextinguishable love would always be her 
greatest grace in his eyes, as her devotion and obedience 
would be a perennial charm. And, indeed, the ecstasy of 
love had made her so brilliantly lovely that her beauty filled 
her with pride, and gave her confidence that she could always 
reign over a man so easy to kindle as Monsieur de Sommer- 
vieux. Thus her position as a wife brought her no knowledge 
but the lessons of love. 

In the midst of her happiness, she was still the simple child 
who had lived in obscurity in the Rue Saint-Denis, and she 
never thought of acquiring the manners, the information, the 
tone of the world she had to live in. Her words being the 
words of love, she revealed in them, no doubt, a certain 
pliancy of mind and a certain refinement of speech ; but she 
used the language common to all women when they find them- 
selves plunged in passion,, which seems to be their element. 
When, by chance, Augustine expressed an idea that did not 
harmonize with Theodore’s, the young artist laughed, as we 
laugh at the first mistakes of a foreigner, though they end by 
annoying us if they are not corrected. 

* Fioriture. 

W 


268 


SIGN OF THE CAT AND FA CHET. 


In spite of all this lovemaking, by the end of this year, as 
delightful as it was swift, Sommervieux felt one morning the 
need for resuming his work and his old habits. His wife was 
expecting their first child. He saw some friends again. 
During the tedious discomforts of the year when a young wife 
is nursing an infant for the first time, he worked, no doubt, 
with zeal, but he occasionally sought diversion in the fashion- 
able world. The house which he was best pleased to frequent 
was that of the Duchesse de Carigliano, who had at last 
attracted the celebrated artist to her parties. When Augus- 
tine was quite well again, and her boy no longer required the 
assiduous care which debars a mother from social pleasures, 
Theodore had come to the stage of wishing to know the joys 
of satisfied vanity to be found in society by a man who shows 
himself with a handsome woman, the object of envy and ad- 
miration. 

To figure in drawing-rooms with the reflected lustre of her 
husband’s fame, and to find other women envious of her, was 
to Augustine a new harvest of pleasures ; but it was the last 
gleam of conjugal happiness. She first wounded her husband’s 
vanity when, in spite of vain efforts, she betrayed her ignorance, 
the inelegance of her language, and the narrowness of her ideas. 
Sommervieux’s nature, subjugated for nearly two years and a 
half by the first transports of love, now, in the calm of less 
new possession, recovered its bent and habits, for a while 
diverted from their channel. Poetry, painting, and the 
subtle joys of imagination have inalienable rights over a lofty 
spirit. These cravings of a powerful soul had not been 
starved in Theodore during these two years ; they had only 
found fresh pasture. As soon as the meadows of love had been 
ransacked, and the artist had gathered roses and cornflowers 
as the children do, so greedily that he did not see that his 
hands could hold no more, the scene changed. When the 
painter showed his wife the sketches for his finest compositions 
he heard her exclaim, as her father had done : “ How pretty ! ” 


SIGN OF THE CAT AND FA CHET, 


269 


This tepid admiration was not the outcome of conscientious 
feeling, but of her faith on the strength of love. 

Augustine cared more for a look than for the finest picture. 
The only “ sublime ” she knew was that of the heart. At 
last Theodore could not resist the evidence of the cruel fact — 
his wife was insensible to poetry, she did not dwell in his 
sphere, she could not follow him in all his vagaries, his imag- 
inings, his joys and his sorrows ; she walked groveling in 
the world of reality, while his head was in the skies. Common 
minds cannot appreciate the perennial sufferings of a being 
who, while bound to another by the most intimate affection, 
is obliged constantly to suppress the dearest flights of his soul, 
and to thrust down into the void those images which a 
magic power compels him to create. To him the torture is 
all the more intolerable because his feeling toward his com- 
panion enjoins, as its first law, that they should have no 
concealments, but mingle the aspirations of their thought as 
perfectly as the effusions of their soul. The demands of 
nature are not to be cheated. She is as inexorable as neces- 
sity, which is, indeed, a sort of social nature. Sommervieux 
took refuge in the peace and silence of his studio, hoping that 
the habit of living with artists might mould his wife and 
develop in her the dormant germs of lofty intelligence which 
some superior minds suppose must exist in every being. But 
Augustine was too sincerely religious not to take fright at 
the tone of artists. At the first dinner Theodore gave, she 
heard a young painter say, with the childlike lightness, which 
to her was unintelligible, and which redeems a jest from the 
taint of profanity, “But, madame, your Paradise cannot be 
more beautiful than Raphael’s Transfiguration ! Well, and I 
got tired of looking at that.” 

Thus Augustine came among this sparkling set in a spirit of 
distrust which no one could fail to see. She was a restraint 
on their freedom. Now an artist who feels restraint is pitiless; 
he stays away, or laughs it to scorn. Madame Guillaume, 


270 


SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET 


among other absurdities, had an excessive notion of the dig- 
nity she considered the prerogative of a married woman ; and 
Augustine, though she had often made fun of it, could not 
help a slight imitation of her mother’s primness. This ex- 
treme propriety, which virtuous wives do not always avoid, 
suggested a few epigrams in the form of sketches, in which the 
harmless jest was in such good taste that Sommervieux could 
not take offense ; and even if they had been more severe, 
these pleasantries were after all only reprisals from his friends. 
Still, nothing could seem a trifle to a spirit so open as Theo- 
dore’s to impressions from without. A coldness insensibly 
crept over him, and inevitably spread. To attain conjugal 
happiness we must climb a hill whose summit is a narrow ridge, 
close to a steep and slippery descent ; the painter’s love was 
falling down this. He regarded his wife as incapable of ap- 
preciating the moral considerations which justified him in his 
own eyes for his singular behavior to her, and believed him- 
self quite innocent in hiding from her the thoughts she could 
not enter into, and peccadilloes outside the jurisdiction of a 
bourgeois conscience. Augustine wrapped herself in sullen 
and silent grief. These unconfessed feelings placed a shroud be- 
tween the husband and wife which could not fail to grow thicker 
day by day. Though her husband never failed in considera- 
tion for her, Augustine could not help trembling as she saw 
that he kept for the outer world those treasures of wit and 
grace that he formerly would lay at her feet. She soon began 
to find a sinister meaning in the jocular speeches that are cur- 
rent in the world as to the inconstancy of men. She made 
no complaints, but her demeanor conveyed reproach. 

Three years after her marriage this pretty young woman, 
who dashed past in her handsome carriage, and lived in a 
sphere of glory and riches to the envy of heedless folk incap- 
able of taking a just view of the situations of life, was a prey 
to intense grief. She lost her color ; she reflected ; she made 
comparisons; then sorrow unfolded to her the first lessons of 


SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET. 


271 


experience. She determined to restrict herself bravely within 
the round of duty, hoping that by this generous conduct she 
might sooner or later win back her husband’s love. But it 
was not so. When Sommervieux, tired with work, came in 
from his studio, Augustine did not put her work away so 
quickly but that the painter might find his wife mending the 
household linen, and his own, with all the care of a good 
housewife. She supplied generously and without a murmur 
the money needed for his lavishness ; but in her anxiety to 
husband her dear Theodore’s fortune, she was strictly eco- 
nomical for herself and in certain details of domestic manage- 
ment. Such conduct is incompatible with the easy-going 
habits of artists, who, at the end of their life, have enjoyed 
it so keenly that they never inquire into the causes of their 
ruin. 

It is useless to note every tint of shadow by which the 
brilliant hues of their honeymoon were overcast till they were 
lost in utter blackness. One evening poor Augustine, who 
had for some time heard her husband speak with enthusiasm 
of the Duchesse de Carigliano, received from a friend certain 
malignantly charitable warnings as to the nature of the attach- 
ment which Sommervieux had formed for this celebrated flirt 
of the Imperial Court. At one-and-twenty, in all the splendor 
of youth and beauty, Augustine saw herself deserted for a 
woman of six-and-thirty. Feeling herself so wretched in the 
midst of a world of festivity which to her was a blank, the 
poor little thing could no longer understand the admiration 
she excited, or the envy of which she was the object. Her 
face assumed a different expression. Melancholy tinged her 
features with the sweetness of resignation and the pallor of 
scorned love. Ere long she, too, was courted by the most 
fascinating men ; but she remained lonely and virtuous. Some 
contemptuous words which escaped her husband filled her 
with incredible despair. A sinister flash showed her the 
breaches which, as a result of her sordid education, hindered 


272 


SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET. 


the perfect union of her soul with Theodore’s ; she loved him 
well enough to absolve him and condemn herself. She shed 
tears of blood, and perceived, too late, that there are mesalli- 
ances of the spirit as well as of rank and habits. As she 
recalled the early raptures of their union, she understood the 
full extent of that lost happiness, and accepted the conclusion 
that so rich a harvest of love was in itself a whole life, which 
only sorrow could pay for. At the same time, she loved too 
truly to lose all hope. At one-and-twenty she dared under- 
take to educate herself, and make her imagination, at least, 
worthy of that she admired. “If I am not a poet,” thought 
she, “at any rate, I will understand poetry.” 

Then, with all the strength of will, all the energy which 
every woman can display when she loves, Madame de Som- 
mervieux tried to alter her character, her manners, and her 
habits; but by dint of devouring books and learning undaunt- 
edly, she only succeeded in becoming less ignorant. Light- 
ness of wit and the graces of conversation are a gift of nature, 
or the fruit of education begun in the cradle. She could 
appreciate music and enjoy it, but she could not sing with 
taste. She understood literature and the beauties of poetry, 
but it was too late to cultivate her refractory memory. She 
listened with pleasure to social conversation, but she could 
contribute nothing brilliant. Her religious notions and home- 
grown prejudices were antagonistic to the complete emancipa- 
tion of her intelligence. Finally, a foregone conclusion 
against her had stolen into Theodore’s mind, and this she 
could not conquer. The artist would laugh at those who 
flattered him about his wife, and his irony had some founda- 
tion ; he so overawed the pathetic young creature that, in his 
presence, or alone with him, she trembled. Hampered by 
her too eager desire to please, her wits and her knowledge 
vanished in one absorbing feeling. Even her fidelity vexed 
the unfaithful husband, who seemed to bid her do wrong by 
stigmatizing her virtue as insensibility. Augustine tried in 


SIGJV OF THE CAT AND RACKET. 


273 


vain to abdicate her reason, to yield to her husband’s caprices 
and whims, to devote herself to the selfishness of his vanity. 
Her sacrifices bore no fruit. Perhaps they had both let the 
moment slip when souls may meet in comprehension. One 
day the young wife’s too sensitive heart received one of those 
blows which so strain the bonds of feeling that they seem to 
be broken. She withdrew into solitude. But before long a 
fatal idea suggested to her to seek counsel and comfort in the 
bosom of her family. 

So one morning she made her way toward the grotesque 
facade of the humble, silent home where she had spent her 
childhood. She sighed as she looked up at the sash-window, 
whence one day she had sent her first kiss to him who now 
shed as much sorrow as glory on her life. Nothing was 
changed in the cavern, where the drapery business had, how- 
ever, started on a new life. Augustine’s sister filled her 
mother’s old place at the desk. The unhappy young woman 
met her brother-in-law with his pen behind his ear ; he hardly 
listened to her, he was so full of business. The formidable 
symptoms of stock-taking were visible all round him ; he begged 
her to excuse him. She was received coldly enough by her 
sister, who owed her a grudge. In fact, Augustine, in her 
finery, and stepping out of a handsome carriage, had never 
been to see her but when passing by. The wife of the prudent 
Lebas, imagining that want of money was the prime cause of 
this early call, tried to keep up a tone of reserve which more 
than once made Augustine smile. The painter’s wife per- 
ceived that, apart from the cap and lappets, her mother had 
found in Virginie a successor who could uphold the ancient 
honor of the Cat and Racket. At breakfast she observed cer- 
tain changes in the management of the house which did honor 
to Lebas’ good sense ; the assistants did not rise before des- 
sert ; they were allowed to talk, and the abundant meal spoke 
of comfort without luxury. The fashionable woman found 
some tickets for a box at the Frangais, where she remembered 
18 


274 


SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET, 


having seen her sister from time to time. Madame Lebas had 
a cashmere shawl over her shoulders, of which the value bore 
witness of her husband’s generosity to her. In short, the 
couple were keeping pace with the times. During the two- 
thirds of the day she spent there, Augustine was touched to 
the heart by the equable happiness, devoid, to be sure, of all 
emotion, but equally free from storms, enjoyed by this well- 
matched couple. They had accepted life as a commercial 
enterprise, in which, above all, they must do credit to the 
business. Not finding any great love in her husband, Virginie 
had set to work to create it. Having by degrees learned to 
esteem and care for his wife, the time that this happiness had 
taken to germinate was to Joseph Lebas a guarantee of its 
durability. Hence, when Augustine plaintively set forth her 
painful position, she had to face the deluge of commonplace 
morality which the traditions of the Rue Saint-Denis furnished 
to her sister. 

“The mischief is done, wife,” said Joseph Lebas; “we 
must try to give our sister good advice.” Then the clever 
tradesman ponderously analyzed the resources which law and 
custom might offer Augustine as a means of escape at this 
crisis ; he ticketed every argument, so to speak, and arranged 
them in their degrees of weight under various categories, as 
though they were articles of merchandise under different quali- 
ties ; then he put them in the scale, weighed them, and ended 
by showing the necessity for his sister-in-law taking violent 
steps which could not satisfy the love she still had for her 
husband ; and, indeed, the feeling had revived in all its 
strength when she heard Joseph Lebas speak of legal proceed- 
ings. Augustine thanked them, and returned home even more 
undecided than she had been before consulting them. She 
now ventured to go to the house in the Rue du Colombier, 
intending to confide her troubles to her father and mother; 
for she was like a sick man who, in his desperate plight, tries 
every prescription, and even puts faith in old wives’ remedies. 


SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET 


275 


The old people received their daughter with an effusiveness 
that touched her deeply. Her visit brought them some little 
change, and that to them was worth a fortune. For the last 
four years they had gone their way in life like navigators with- 
out a goal or a compass. Sitting by the chimney-corner, they 
would talk over their disasters under the old law of maximum, 
of their great investments in cloth, of the way they had 
weathered bankruptcies, and, above all, the famous failure of 
Lecocq, Monsieur Guillaume’s battle of Marengo. Then, 
when they had exhausted the tale of lawsuits, they recapitu- 
lated the sums-total of their most profitable stock-takings, and 
told each other old stories of the Saint-Denis quarter. At 
two o’clock old Guillaume went to cast an eye on the business 
at the Cat and Racket ; on his way back he called at all the 
stores, formerly the rivals of his own, where the young pro- 
prietors hoped to inveigle the old draper into some risky 
'discount, which, as was his wont, he never refused point- 
blank. Two good Normandy horses were dying of their own 
fat in the stables of the big house ; Madame Guillaume never 
used them but to drag her on Sundays to high mass at the 
parish church. Three times a week the worthy couple kept 
open house. By the influence of his son-in-law Sommervieux, 
Monsieur Guillaume had been named a member of the con- 
sulting board for the clothing of the army. Since her hus- 
band had stood so high in office, Madame Guillaume had 
decided that she must receive ; her rooms were so crammed 
with gold and silver ornaments, and furniture, tasteless but of 
undoubted value, that the simplest room in the house looked 
like a chapel. Economy and expense seemed to be struggling 
for the upper hand in every accessory. It was as though 
Monsieur Guillaume had looked to a good investment, even 
in the purchase of a candlestick. In the midst of this bazaar, 
where splendor revealed the owners’ want of occupation, 
Sommervieux’s famous picture filled the place of honor, and in 
it Monsieur and Madame Guillaume found their chief conso- 


276 


SIGN OF THE CAT AND FA CHET. 


lation, turning their eyes, harnessed with eye-glasses, twenty 
times a day on this presentment of their past life, to them so 
active and amusing. The appearance of this mansion and 
these rooms, where everything had an aroma of staleness and 
mediocrity, the spectacle offered by these two beings, cast 
away, as it were, on a rock far from the world and the ideas 
which are life, startled Augustine ; she could here contemplate 
the sequel of the scene of which the first part had struck her 
at the house of Lebas — a life of stir without movement, a 
mechanical and instinctive existence like that of the beaver; 
and then she felt an indefinable pride in her troubles, as she 
reflected that they had their source in eighteen months of 
such happiness as, in her eyes, was worth a thousand lives like 
this ; its vacuity seemed to her horrible. However, she con- 
cealed this not very charitable feeling, and displayed for her 
parents her newly acquired accomplishments of mind, and the 
ingratiating tenderness that love had revealed to her, disposing 
them to listen to her matrimonial grievances. Old people 
have a weakness for this kind of confidences. Madame Guil- 
laume wanted to know the most trivial details of that alien 
life, which to her seemed almost fabulous. The travels of 
Baron de la Houtan, which she began again and again and 
never finished, told her nothing more unheard-of concerning 
the Canadian savages. 

“ What, child, your husband shuts himself into a room with 
naked women ! And you are so simple as to believe that he 
draws them? ** 

As she uttered this exclamation, the grandmother laid her 
spectacles on a little work-table, shook her skirts, and clasped 
her hands on her knees, raised by a foot-warmer, her favorite 
pedestal. 

“But, mother, all artists are obliged to have models.*' 

“ He took good care not to tell us that when he asked 
leave to marry you. If I had known it, I would never have 
given my daughter to a man who followed such a trade. 


SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET, 


277 


Religion forbids such horrors ; they are immoral. And at 
what time of night do you say he comes home ? ” 

“At one o’clock — two ” 

The old couple looked at each other in utter amazement. 

“Then he gambles?” said Monsieur Guillaume. “In 
my day only gamblers stayed out so late.” 

Augustine made a face that scorned the accusation. 

“ He must keep you up through dreadful nights waiting for 
him,” said Madame Guillaume. “But you go to bed, don’t 
you? And when he has lost, the wretch wakes you.” 

“No, mamma, on the contrary, he is sometimes in very 
good spirits. Not infrequently, indeed, when it is fine, he 
suggests that I should get up and go into the woods.” 

“The woods! At that hour? Then have you such a 
small set of rooms that his bedroom and his sitting-rooms are 
not enough, and that he must run about? But it is just to 
give you cold that the wretch proposes such expeditions. He 
wants to get rid of you. Did one ever hear of a man settled 
in life, a well-behaved, quiet man, galloping about like a 
warlock?” 

“But, my dear mother, you do not understand that he 
must have excitement to fire his genius. He is fond of scenes 
which ” 

“ I would make scenes for him, fine scenes ! ” cried Madame 
Guillaume, interrupting her daughter. “How can you show 
any consideration to such a man? In the first place, I don’t 
like his drinking water only ; it is not wholesome. Why does 
he object to see a woman eating? What queer notion is that ! 
But he is mad. All you tell us about him is impossible. A 
man cannot leave his home without a word, and never come 
back for ten days. And then he tells you he has been to 
Dieppe to paint the sea. As if any one painted the sea. ! He 
crams you with a pack of tales that are too absurd.” 

Augustine opened her lips to defend her husband; but 
Madame Guillaume enjoined silence with a wave of her hand, 


278 


SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET. 


which she obeyed by a survival of habit, and her mother went 
on in harsh tones: “Don’t talk to me about the man! He 
never set foot in a church excepting to see you and to be 
married. People without religion are capable of anything. 
Did Guillaume ever dream of hiding anything from me, of 
spending three days without saying a word to me, and of 
chattering afterward like a blind magpie?” 

“My dear mother, you judge superior people too severely. 
If their ideas were the same as other people’s they would not 
be men of genius.” 

f€ Very well, ther let men of genius stop at home and not 
get married. What ! A man of genius is to make his wife 
miserable ? And because he is a genius it is all right ! 
Genius, genius ! It is not so very clever to say black one 
minute and white the next, as he does, to interrupt other 
people, to dance such rigs at home, never to let you know 
which foot you are to stand on, to compel his wife never to 
be amused unless my lord is in gay spirits, and to be dull 
when he is dull.” 

“But, mother, the very nature of such imaginations ” 

“What are such ‘imaginations?’” Madame Guillaume 
went on, interrupting her daughter again. “ Fine ones his 
are, my word ! What possesses a man that all on a sudden, 
without consulting a doctor, he takes it into his head to eat 
nothing but vegetables? If indeed it were from religious 
motives, it might do him some good — but he has no more 
religion than a Huguenot. Was there ever a man known 
who, like him, loved horses better than his fellow-creatures, 
had his hair curled like a heathen, placed statues under muslin- 
covers, closed his shutters in broad day to work by lamplight ? 
There, get along ; if he were not so grossly immoral, he would 
be fit to shut up in a lunatic asylum. Consult Monsieur 
Loraux, the priest at Saint-Sulpice, ask his opinion about it 
all, and he will tell you that your husband does not behave 
like a Christian.” 


SIGN OF THE CAT AND R A CHET 


279 


“ Ob, mother, can you believe ” 

“ Yes, I do believe. You loved him, and you can see none 
of these things. But I can remember in the early days after 
your marriage. I met him in the Champs-Elysees. He was 
on horseback. Well, at one minute he was galloping as hard 
as he could tear, and then pulled up to a walk. I said to my- 
self at that moment, ‘ There is a man devoid of judgment.’ ” 

“Ah, ha ! ” cried Monsieur Guillaume, “ how wise I was 
to have your money settled on yourself with such a queer 
fellow for a husband ! ” 

When Augustine was so imprudent as to set forth her serious 
grievances against her husband, the two old people were 
speechless with indignation. But the word “divorce” was 
ere long spoken by Madame Guillaume. At the sound of the 
word divorce the apathetic old draper seemed to wake up. 
Prompted by his love for his daughter, and also by the excite- 
ment which the proceedings would bring into his uneventful 
life, Father Guillaume took up the matter. He made himself 
the leader of the application for a divorce, laid down the lines 
of it, almost argued the case ; he offered to be at all the 
charges, to see the lawyers, the pleaders, the judges, to move 
heaven and earth. Madame de Sommervieux was frightened, 
she refused her father’s services, said she would not be sepa- 
rated from her husband even if she were ten times as unhappy, 
and talked no more about her sorrows. After being over- 
whelmed by her parents with all the little wordless and con- 
soling kindnesses by which the old couple tried in vain to 
make up to her for her distress of heart, Augustine went away, 
feeling the impossibility of making a superior mind intelligible 
to weak intellects. She had learned that a wife must hide 
from every one, even from her parents, woes for which it is so 
difficult to find sympathy. The storms and sufferings of the 
upper spheres are appreciated only by the lofty spirits who 
inhabit there. In every circumstance we can only be judged 
by our equals. 


280 


SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET. 


Thus poor Augustine found herself thrown back on the 
horror of her meditations, in the cold atmosphere of her 
home. Study was indifferent to her, since study had not 
brought her back her husband’s heart. Initiated into the 
secret of these souls of fire, but bereft of their resources, she 
was compelled to share their sorrows without sharing their 
pleasures. She was disgusted with the world, which to her 
seemed mean and small as compared with the incidents of 
passion. In short, her life was a failure. 

One evening an idea flashed upon her that lighted up her 
dark grief like a beam from heaven. Such an idea could 
never have smiled on a heart less pure, less virtuous than hers. 
She determined to go to the Duchesse de Carigliano, not to 
ask her to give her back her husband’s heart, but to learn the 
arts by which it had been captured ; to engage the interest of 
this haughty fine lady for the mother of her lover’s children ; 
to appeal to her and make her the instrument of her future 
happiness, since she was the cause of her present wretchedness. 

So one day Augustine, timid as she was, but armed with 
supernatural courage, got into her carriage at two in the after- 
noon to try for admittance to the boudoir of the famous 
coquette, who was never visible till that hour. Madame de 
Sommervieux had not yet seen any of the ancient and mag- 
nificent mansions of the Faubourg Saint-Germain. As she 
made her way through the stately corridors, the handsome 
staircases, the vast drawing-rooms — full of flowers, though it 
was in the depth of winter, and decorated with the taste 
peculiar to women born to opulence or to the elegant habits 
of the aristocracy — Augustine felt a terrible clutch at her 
heart ; she coveted the secrets of an elegance of which she 
had never had an idea ; she breathed an air of grandeur which 
explained the attraction of the house for her husband. When 
she reached the private rooms of the duchess she was filled 
with jealousy and a sort of despair, as she admired the luxuri- 
ous arrangement of the furniture, the draperies and the hang- 


SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET. 


281 


ings. Here disorder was a grace, here luxury affected a 
certain contempt of splendor. The fragrance that floated in 
the warm air flattered the sense of smell without offending it. 
The accessories of the rooms were in harmony with a view, 
through plate-glass windows, of the lawns in a garden planted 
with evergreen trees. It was all bewitching, and the art of it 
was not perceptible. The whole spirit of the mistress of these 
rooms pervaded the drawing-room where Augustine awaited 
her: She tried to divine her rival’s character from the aspect 
of the scattered objects ; but there was here something, as 
impenetrable in the disorder as in the symmetry, and to the 
simple-minded young wife all was a sealed letter. All that she 
could discern was that, as a woman, the duchess was a supe- 
rior person. Then a painful thought came over her. 

“Alas! And is it true,” she wondered, “that a simple 
and loving heart is not all-sufficient to an artist ; that to 
balance the weight of these powerful souls they need a union 
with feminine souls of a strength equal to their own ? If 
I had been brought up like this siren, our weapons at least 
might have been equal in the hour of struggle.” 

“But I am not at home!” The sharp, harsh words, 
though spoken in an undertone in the adjoining boudoir, 
were heard by Augustine, and her heart beat violently. 

“The lady is in there,” replied the maid. 

“You are an idiot! Show her in,” replied the duchess, 
whose voice was sweeter, and had assumed the dulcet tones 
of politeness. She evidently now meant to be heard. 

Augustine shyly entered the room. At the end of the 
dainty boudoir she saw the duchess lounging luxuriously on 
an ottoman covered with brown velvet and placed in the 
centre of a sort of apse outlined by soft folds of white lawn 
over a yellow lining. Ornaments of gilt bronze, arranged 
with exquisite taste, enhanced this sort of dais, under which 
the duchess reclined like a Greek statue. The dark hue of 
the velvet gave relief to every fascinating charm. A subdued 


282 SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET. 

light, friendly to her beauty, fell like a reflection rather .han 
a direct illumination. A few rare flowers raised their pel- 
fumed heads from costly Sevres vases. At the moment when 
this picture was presented to Augustine’s astonished eyes, she 
was approaching so noiselessly that she caught a glance from 
those of the enchantress. This look seemed to say to some 
one whom Augustine did not at first perceive, “ Stay ; you 
will see a pretty woman, and make her visit less of a bore. ” 

On seeing Augustine, the duchess rose and made her sit 
down by her. 

“ And to what do I owe the pleasure of this visit, madame?” 
she said with a most gracious smile. 

“Why all this falseness?” thought Augustine, replying 
only with a bow. 

Her silence was compulsory. The young woman saw before 
her a superfluous witness of the scene. This personage was, 
of all the colonels in the army, the youngest, the most fash- 
ionable, and the finest man. His face, full of life and youth, 
but already expressive, was further enhanced by a small 
mustache twirled up into points, and as black as jet, by a full 
imperial, by whiskers carefully combed, and a forest of black 
hair in some disorder. He was whisking a riding-whip with 
an air of ease and freedom which suited his self-satisfied ex- 
pression and the elegance of his dress ; the ribbons attached 
to his button-hole were carelessly tied, and he seemed to pride 
himself much more on his smart appearance than on his 
courage. Augustine looked at the Duchesse de Carigliano, 
and indicated the colonel by a sidelong glance. All its mute 
appeal was understood. 

“ Good-by then, Monsieur d’Aiglemont, we shall meet in 
the Bois de Boulogne.” 

These words were spoken by the siren as though they were 
the result of an agreement made before Augustine’s arrival, 
and she winged them with a threatening look that the officer 
deserved, perhaps, for the admiration he showed in gazing 


SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET. 


283 


at the modest flower, which contrasted so well with the 
haughty duchess. The young fop bowed in silence, turned 
on the heels of his boots, and gracefully quitted the boudoir. 
At this instant, Augustine, watching her rival, whose eyes 
seemed to follow the brilliant officer, detected in that glance 
a sentiment of which the transient expression is known to 
every woman. She perceived with the deepest anguish that 
her visit would be useless ; this lady, full of artifice, was too 
greedy of homage not to have a ruthless heart. 

“ Madame,” said Augustine in a broken voice, “the step I 
am about to take will seem to you very strange ; but there is 
a madness of despair which ought to excuse anything. I 
understand only too well why Theodore prefers your house to 
any other, and why your mind has so much power over his. 
Alas ! I have only to look into myself to find more than 
ample reasons. But I am devoted to my husband, madame. 
Two years of tears have not effaced his image from my heart, 
though I have lost his. In my folly I dared to dream of a 
contest with you ; and I have come to you to ask you by what 
means I may triumph over yourself. Oh, madame,” cried 
the young wife, ardently seizing the hand which her rival 
allowed her to hold, “ I will never pray to God for my own 
happiness with so much fervor as I will beseech Him for yours, 
if you will help me to win back Sommervieux’s regard — I will 
not say his love. I have no hope but in you. Ah ! tell me 
how you could please him, and make him forget the first 

days ” At these words Augustine broke down, suffocated 

with sobs she could not suppress. Ashamed of her weakness, 
she hid her face in her handkerchief, which she bathed with 
tears. “ What a child you are, my dear little beauty ! ” said 
the duchess, carried away by the novelty of such a scene, and 
touched, in spite of herself, at receiving such homage from 
the most perfect virtue perhaps in Paris. She took the young 
wife’s handkerchief, and herself wiped the tears from her eyes, 
soothing her by a few monosyllables murmured with gracious 


284 


SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET. 


compassion. After a moment’s silence the duchess, grasping 
poor Augustine’s hands in both her own — hands that had a 
rare character of dignity and powerful beauty — said in a gentle 
and friendly voice : “ My first warning is to advise you not to 
weep so bitterly ; tears are disfiguring. We must learn to 
deal firmly with the sorrows that make us ill, for love does 
not linger long by a sickbed. Melancholy, at first, no doubt, 
lends a certain attractive grace, but it ends by dragging the 
features and blighting the loveliest face. And, beside, our 
tyrants are so vain as to insist that their slaves should be 
always cheerful.” 

“ But, madame, it is not in my power not to feel. How is 
it. possible, without suffering a thousand deaths, to see the face 
which once beamed with love and gladness turn chill, color- 
less, and indifferent ? I cannot control my heart ! ” 

“So much the worse, sweet child. But I fancy I know all 
your story. In the first place, if your husband is unfaithful 
to you, understand clearly that I am not his accomplice. If 
I was anxious to have him in my drawing-room, it was, I own, 
out of vanity ; he was famous, and he went nowhere. I like 
you too much already to tell you all the mad things he has 
done for my sake. I will only reveal one, because it may 
perhaps help us to bring him back to you, and to punish him 
for the audacity of his behavior to me. He will end by com- 
promising me. I know the world too well, my dear, to 
abandon myself to the discretion of a too superior man. You 
should know that one may allow them to court one, but marry 
them — that is a mistake ! We women ought to admire men 
of genius, and delight in them as a spectacle, but as to living 
with them? Never. No, no. It is like wanting to find 
pleasure in inspecting the machinery of the opera instead of 
sitting in a box to enjoy its brilliant illusions. But this mis- 
fortune has fallen on you, my poor child, has it not ? Well, 
then, you must try to arm yourself against tyranny.” 

“Ah, madame, before coming in here, only seeing you as 


SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET. 285 

I came in, I already detected some arts of which I had no 
suspicion.’ ’ 

“Well, come and see me sometimes, and it will not be long 
before you have mastered the knowledge of these trifles, im- 
portant, too, in their way. Outward things are, to fools, half 
of life ; and in that matter more than one clever man is a 
fool, in spite of all his talent. But I dare wager you never 
could refuse your Theodore anything ! ” 

“ How refuse anything, madame, if one loves a man? ” 

“ PoOr innocent, I could adore you for your simplicity. 
You should know that the more we love the less we should 
allow a man, above all, a husband, to see the whole extent of 
our passion. The one who loves most is tyrannized over, 
and, which is worse, is sooner or later neglected. The one 

who wishes to rule should ” 

“ What, madame, must I then dissimulate, calculate, be- 
come false, form an artificial character, and live in it ? How 
is it possible to live in such a way? Can you ” she hesi- 

tated ; the duchess smiled. 

“ My dear child,” the great lady went on in a serious tone, 
“ conjugal happiness has in all times been a speculation, a 
business demanding particular attention. If you persist in 
talking passion while I am talking marriage, we shall soon 
cease to understand each other. Listen to me,” she went on, 
assuming a confidential tone. “ I have been in the way of 
seeing some of the superior men of our day. Those who have 
married have for the most part chosen quite insignificant 
wives. Well, those wives governed them, as the Emperor 
governs us ; and if they were not loved, they were at least 
respected. I like secrets — especially those which concern 
women — well enough to have amused myself by seeking the 
clue to the riddle. Well, my sweet child, those worthy 
women had the gift of analyzing their husbands 1 nature ; 
instead of taking fright, like you, at their superiority, they 
very acutely noted the qualities they lacked, and either by 


286 


SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET. 


possessing those qualities, or by feigning to possess them, 
they found means of making such a handsome display of them 
in their husbands’ eyes that in the end they impressed them. 
Also, I must tell you, all these souls which appear so lofty 
have just a speck of madness in them, which we ought to 
know how to take advantage of. By firmly resolving to have 
the upper hand and never deviating from that aim, by bring- 
ing all our actions to bear on it, all our ideas, our cajolery, 
we subjugate these eminently capricious natures, which, by the 
very mutability of their thoughts, lend us the means of influ- 
encing them.” 

“ Good heavens ! ” cried the young wife in dismay. ‘‘And 
this is life. It is a warfare ” 

“ In which we must always threaten,” said the duchess, 
laughing. “Our power is wholly factitious. And we must 
never allow a man to despise us ; it is impossible to recover 
from such a descent but by odious manoeuvring. Come,” she 
added, “ I will give you a means of bringing your husband to 
his senses.” . 

She rose with a smile to guide the young and guileless ap- 
prentice to conjugal arts through the labyrinth of her palace. 
They came to a back staircase, which led up to the reception- 
rooms. As Madame de Carigliano pressed the secret spring- * 
lock of the door she stopped^ looking at Augustine with an 
inimitable gleam of shrewdness and grace. “The Due de 
Carigliano adores me,” said she. “Well, he dare not enter 
by this door without my leave. And he is a man in the habit 
of commanding thousands of soldiers. He knows how to face 
a battery, but before me — he is afraid ! ” 

Augustine sighed. They entered a sumptuous gallery, where 
the painter’s wife was led by the duchess up to the portrait 
painted by Theodore of Mademoiselle Guillaume. On seeing 
it, Augustine uttered a cry. 

“ I knew it was no longer in my house,” she said, “ but— 
here !- ” 


SIGN OF THE CAT AND FA CHET. 287 

* ‘ My dear child, I asked for it merely to see to what pitch 
of idiocy a man of genius may attain. Sooner or later I 
should have returned it to you, for I never expected the plea- 
sure of seeing the original here face to face with the copy. 
While we finish our conversation I will have it carried down 
to your carriage. And if, armed with such a talisman, you 
are not your husband’s mistress for a hundred years, you are 
not a woman, and you deserve your fate.” 

Augusfine kissed the duchess’ hand, and the lady clasped 
her to her heart, with all the more tenderness because she 
would forget her by the morrow. This scene might, perhaps, 
have destroyed for ever the candor and purity of a less virtuous 
woman than Augustine, for the astute politics of the higher 
social spheres were no more consonant to Augustine than the 
narrow reasoning of Joseph Lebas, or Madame Guillaume’s 
vapid morality. Strange are the results of the false positions 
into which we may be brought by the slightest mistake in the 
conduct of life ! Augustine was like an Alpine cowherd sur- 
prised by an avalanche ; if he hesitates, if he listens to the 
shouts of his comrades, he is almost certainly lost. In such a 
crisis the heart steels itself or breaks. 

Madame de Sommervieux returned home a prey to such 
agitation as it is difficult to describe. Her conversation with 
the Duchesse de Carigliano had roused in her mind a crowd 
of contradictory thoughts. Like the sheep in the fable, full 
of courage in the wolf’s absence, she preached to herself, and 
laid down admirable plans of conduct ; she devised a thousand 
coquettish stratagems ; she even talked to her husband, finding, 
away from him, all the springs of true eloquence which never 
desert a woman ; then, as she pictured to herself Theodore’s 
clear and steadfast gaze, she began to quake. When she asked 
whether monsieur were at home her voice shook. On learning 
that he would not be in to dinner, she felt an unaccountable 
thrill of joy. Like a criminal who has appealed against sen- 
tence of death, a respite, however short, seemed to her a life- 


288 


SIGN OF THE CAT AND RACKET. 


time. She placed the portrait in her room, and waited for 
her husband in all the agonies of hope. That this venture 
must decide her future life, she felt too keenly not to shiver 
at every sound, even the low ticking of the clock, which 
seemed to aggravate her terrors by doling them out to her. 
She tried to cheat time by various devices. The idea struck 
her of dressing in a way which would make her exactly like 
the portrait. Then, knowing her husband’s restless temper, 
she had her room lighted up with unusual brightness, feeling 
sure that when he came in curiosity would bring him there at 
once. Midnight had struck when, at the call of the groom, 
the street gate was opened, and the artist’s carriage rumbled 
in over the stones of the silent courtyard. 

“ What is the meaning of this illumination ? ” asked Theo- 
dore in glad tones as he came into her room. 

Augustine skillfully seized the auspicious moment ; she threw 
herself into her husband’s arnas, and pointed to the portrait. 
The artist stood rigid as a rock, and his eyes turned alter- 
nately on Augustine, on the accusing dress. The frightened 
wife, half-dead, as she watched her husband’s changeful brow 
— that terrible brow — saw the expressive furrows gathering 
like clouds ; then she felt her blood curdling in her veins 
when, with a glaring look and in a deep, hollow voice, he 
began to question her — 

“ Where did you find that picture ? ” 

“The Duchesse de Carigliano returned it to me,” replied 
Augustine. 

“ You asked her for it ? ” 

“ I did not know that she had it.’* 

The gentleness, or rather the exquisite sweetness of this 
angel’s voice, might have touched a cannibal, but not an artist 
in the clutches of wounded vanity. 

“ It is worthy of her ! ” exclaimed the painter in a voice of 
thunder. “I will be revenged ! ” he cried, striding up and 
down the room. “ She shall die of shame; I will paint her ! 


SIGN OF THE CAT AND FA CHET. 


289 


Yes, I will paint her as Messalina stealing out at night from 
the palace of Claudius.” 

“ Theodore ! ” said a faint voice. 

“I will kill her!” 

“ My dear ” 

“ She is in love with that little cavalry colonel, because he 
rides well ” 

“ Theodore ! 

“ Let me be ! ” said the painter in a tone almost like a roar. 

It would be odious to describe the whole scene. In the end 
the frenzy of passion prompted the artist to acts and words 
which any woman not so young as Augustine would have 
ascribed to madness. 

At eight o’clock next morning Madame Guillaume, surpris- 
ing her daughter, found her pale, with red eyes, her hair in 
disorder, holding a handkerchief soaked with tears, while she 
gazed at the floor strewn with the torn fragments of a dress 
and the broken pieces of a large gilt picture-frame. Augus- 
tine, almost senseless with grief, pointed to the wreck with a 
gesture of deep despair. 

“ I don’t know that the loss is very great ! ” cried the old 
mistress of the Cat and Racket. “ It was like you, no doubt; 
but I am told that there is a man on the boulevard who paints 
lovely portraits for fifty crowns.” 

“ Oh, mother ! ” 

“ Poor child, you are quite right,” replied Madame Guil- 
laume, who misinterpreted the expression of her daughter’s 
glance at her. “True, my child, no one ever can love .you 
as fondly as a mother. My darling, I guess it all ; but con- 
fide your sorrows to me, and I will comfort you. Did I not 
tell you long ago that the man was mad ! Your maid has told 
me pretty stories. Why, he must be a perfect monster ! ” 

Augustine laid a finger on her white lips, as if to implore a 
moment’s silence. During this dreadful night misery had led 
her to that patient resignation which in mothers and loving 
19 


290 


SIGN OF THE CAT AND FA CHET. 


wives transcends in its effects all human energy, and perhaps 
reveals in the heart of women the existence of certain chords 
which God has withheld from men. 

An inscription engraved on a broken column in the cem- 
etery at Montmartre states that Madame de Sommervieux died 
at the age of twenty-seven. In the simple words of this epi- 
taph one of the timid creature’s friends can read the last scene 
of a tragedy. Every year, on the second of November, All- 
Souls’ Day, the solemn day of the dead, he never passes this 
monument to youth without wondering whether it does not 
need a stronger woman than Augustine to endure the violent 
embrace of genius? 

“ The humble and modest flowers that bloom in the valley,” 
he reflects, “perish, perhaps, when they are transplanted too 
near the skies, to the region where storms gather and the sun 
is scorching.” 



THE FIRM OF NUCINGEN 

(La Maison Nucingen). 

Translated by Ellen Marriage. 

To Madame Zuhna Carraud. 

To whom , madame , but to you should I inscribe 
this work ; to you whose lofty and candid intellect is 
a treasury to your friends ; to you that are to me not 
only a whole public , but the most indulgent of sisters 
as well 1 Will you deign to accept a token of the 
friendship of which I am proud ? You , and some few 
souls as noble , will grasp the whole of the thought 
underlying The Firm of Nucingen, appended to Cesar 
Birotteau. Is there not a whole social lesson in the 
contrast between the two stories ? 

De Balzac. 

You know how slight the partitions are between the private 
rooms of fashionable restaurants in Paris ; Very’s largest room, 
for instance, is cut in two by a removable screen. This Scene 
is not laid at Very’s, but in snug quarters, which for reasons 
of my own I forbear to specify. We were two, so I will say, 
like Henri Monnier’s Prudhomme, “ I should not like to 
compromise her /” 

We had remarked the want of solidity in the wall-structure, 
so we talked with lowered voices as we sat together in the 
little private room, lingering over the dainty dishes of a dinner 
exquisite in more senses than one. We had come as far as 
the roast, however, and still we had no neighbors; no sound 
came from the next room save the crackling of the fire. But 
when the clock struck eight, we heard voices and noisy foot- 
steps ; the waiters brought candles. Evidently there was a 

( 291 ) 


292 


THE FIRM OF NUCINGEN. 


party assembled in the next room, and at the first words I 
knew at once with whom we had to do — four bold cormorants 
as ever sprang from the foam on the crests of the ever-rising 
waves of this present generation — four pleasant young fellows 
whose existence was problematical, since they were not known 
to possess either stock or landed estates, yet they lived, and 
lived well. These ingenious condottieri (mercenary soldiers) 
of a modern industrialism, that has come to be the most ruth- 
less of all warfares, leave anxieties to their creditors and keep 
the pleasures for themselves. They are careful for nothing, 
save dress. Still, with courage of the Jean Bart order, that 
will smoke cigars on a barrel of powder (perhaps by way of 
keeping up their character), with a quizzing humor that out- 
does the minor newspapers, sparing no one, not even them- 
selves ; clear-sighted, wary, keen after business, grasping yet 
open-handed, envious yet self-complacent, profound politi- 
cians by fits and starts, analyzing everything, guessing every- 
thing — not one of these in question had as yet contrived to 
make his way in the world which they chose for their scene 
of operations. Only one of the four, indeed, had succeeded 
in coming as far as the foot of the ladder. 

To have money is nothing ; the self-made man only finds 
out all that he lacks after six months of flatteries. Andoche 
Finot, the self-made man in question, stiff, taciturn, cold, and 
dull-witted, possessed the sort of spirit which will not shrink 
from groveling before any creature that may be of use to him, 
and the cunning to be insolent when he needs a man no 
longer. Like one of the grotesque figures in the ballet in 
“ Gustave,” he was a marquis behind, a boor in front. And 
this high-priest of commerce had a following. 

Emile Blondet, journalist, with abundance of intellectual 
power, reckless, brilliant, and indolent, could do anything 
that he chose, yet he submitted to be exploited with his eyes 
open. Treacherous or kind upon impulse, a man to love, but 
not to respect ; quick-witted as a soubrette , unable to refuse 


THE FIRM OF NUCINGEN. 


293 


his pen to any one that asked, or his heart to the first that 
would borrow it, Emile was the most fascinating of those 
light-of-loves of whom a fantastic and brilliant modern wit 
declared that “ he liked them better in satin slippers than in 
boots.” 

The third in the party, Couture by name, lived by specula- 
tion, grafting one affair upon another to make the gains pay 
for the losses. He was always between wind and water, keep- 
ing himself afloat by his bold, sudden strokes and the nervous 
energy of his play. Hither and thither he would swim over 
the vast sea of interests in Paris, in quest of some little isle 
that should be so far a debatable land that he might abide 
upon it. Clearly Couture was not in his proper place. 

As for the fourth and most malicious personage, his name 
will be enough — it was Bixiou ! Not (alas !) the Bixiou of 
1825, but the Bixiou of 1836, a misanthropic buffoon, ac- 
knowledged supreme, by reason of his energetic and caustic 
wit ; a very fiend let loose now that he saw how he had squan- 
dered his intellect in pure waste ; a Bixiou vexed by the 
thought that he had not come by his share of the wreckage in 
the last Revolution ; a Bixiou with a kick for every one, like 
Pierrot at the Funambules. Bixiou had the whole history of 
his own times at his finger-ends, more particularly its scanda- 
lous chronicle, embellished by added waggeries of his own. 
He sprang like a clown upon everybody’s back, only to do his 
utmost to leave the executioner’s brand upon every pair of 
shoulders. 

The first cravings of gluttony satisfied, our neighbors reached 
the stage at which we also had arrived, to wit, the dessert ; 
and, as we made no sign, they believed that they were alone. 
Thanks to the champague, the talk grew confidential as they 
dallied with the dessert amid the cigar smoke. Yet through 
it all you felt the influence of the icy shade that leaves the 
most spontaneous feeling frost-bound and stiff, that checks 
the most generous inspirations, and gives a sharp ring to the 


294 


THE FIRM OF NUCINGEN. 


laughter. Their table-talk was full of the bitter irony which 
turns a jest into a sneer; it told of the exhaustion of souls 
given over to themselves ; of lives with no end in view but 
the satisfaction of self — of egoism induced by these times of 
peace in which we live. I can think of nothing like it save a 
pamphlet against mankind at large which Diderot was afraid 
to publish, a book that bares man’s breast simply to expose 
the plague-sores upon it. We listened to just such a pamphlet 
as “Rameau’s Nephew,” spoken aloud in all good faith, in 
the course of after-dinner talk, in which nothing, not even the 
point which the speaker wished to carry, was sacred from 
epigram; nothing taken for granted, nothing built up except 
upon ruins, nothing reverenced save the skeptic’s adopted 
article of belief — the omnipotence, omniscience, and universal 
applicability of money. 

After some target practice at the outer circle of their ac- 
quaintances, they turned their ill-natured shafts at their inti- 
mate friends. With a sign I explained my wish to stay and 
listen as soon as Bixiou took up his parable, as will shortly be 
seen. And so we listened to one of those terrific improvisa- 
tions which won that artist such a name among a certain set 
of seared and jaded spirits ; and often interrupted and resumed 
though it was. memory serves me as a reporter of it. The 
opinions expressed and the form of expression lie alike outside 
the conditions of literature. It was, more properly speaking, 
a medley of sinister revelations that paint our age, to which 
indeed no other kind of story should be told ; and, beside, I 
throw all the responsibility upon the principal speaker. The 
pantomime and the gestures that accompanied Bixiou’s changes 
of voice, as he acted the parts of the various persons, must 
have been perfect, judging by the applause and admiring 
comments that broke from his audience of three. 

“Then did Rastignac refuse?” asked Blondet, apparently 
addressing Finot. 

“ Point-blank.” 


THE FIRM OF NUCINGEN. 


295 


“ But did you threaten him with the newspapers? ” asked 
Bixiou. 

“ He began to laugh,” returned Finot. 

“ Rastignac is the late lamented de Marsay’s direct heir; 
he will make his way politically as well as socially,” com- 
mented Blondet. 

“ But how did he make his money ? ” asked Couture. “ In 
1819 both he and the illustrious Bianchon lived in a shabby 
boarding-house in the Latin quarter;* his people ate roast 
cockchafers and drank their own wine so as to send him a 
hundred francs every month. His father’s property was not 
worth a thousand crowns ; he had two sisters and a brother on 
his hands, and now ” 

“Now he has an income of forty thousand livres,” con- 
tinued Finot ; “ his sisters had a handsome fortune apiece and 
married into noble families ; he leaves his mother a life-interest 
in the property ” 

“ Even in 1827 I have known him without a penny,” said 
Blondet. 

“Oh ! in 1827,” said Bixiou. 

“ Well,” resumed Finot, “ yet to-day, as we see, he is in a 
fair way to be a minister, a peer of France — anything that he 
likes. He broke decently with Delphine three years ago ; he 
will not marry except on good grounds ; and he may marry a 
girl of noble family. The chap had the sense to take up with 
a wealthy woman.” 

“ My friends, give him the benefit of extenuating circum- 
stances,” urged Blondet. “ When he escaped the clutches of 
want, he dropped into the claws of a very clever man.” 

“You know what Nucingen is,” said Bixiou. “In the 
early days, Delphine and Rastignac thought him * good- 
natured ; ’ he seemed to regard a wife as a plaything, an orna- 
ment in his house. And that very fact showed me that the 
man was square at the base as well as in height,” added Bixiou. 

* See “ Father Goriot.” 


296 


THE FIRM OF NUCINGEtf. 


“Nucingen makes no bones about admitting that his wife is 
his fortune; she is an indispensable chattel, but a wife takes a 
secondary place in the high-pressure life of a political leader 
and great capitalist. He once said in my hearing that Bona- 
parte had blundered like a bourgeois in his early relations with 
Josephine ; and that after he had had the spirit to use her as 
a stepping-stone, he had made himself ridiculous by trying to 
make a companion of her.” 

“Any man of unusual powers is bound to take Oriental 
views of women,” said Blondet. 

“The baron blended the opinions of East and West in a 
charming Parisian creed ; he abhorred de Marsay ; de Marsay 
was unmanageable; but with Rastignac he was much pleased; 
he exploited him, though Rastignac was not aware of it. All 
the burdens of married life were put on him. Rastignac bore 
the brunt of Delphine’s whims; he escorted her to the Bois de 
Boulogne ; lie went with her to the play; and the little poli- 
tician and great man of to-day spent a good deal of his life at 
that time in writing dainty notes. Eugene was scolded for 
little nothings from the first ; he was in good spirits when Del- 
phine was cheerful, and drooped when she felt low ; he bore 
the weight of her confidences and her ailments ; he gave up 
his time, the hours of his precious youth, to fill the empty void 
of that fair Parisian’s idleness. Delphine and he held high 
councils on the toilettes which went best together ; he stood 
the fire of bad temper and broadsides of pouting fits, while she, 
by way of trimming the balance, was very nice to the baron. 
As for the baron, he laughed in his sleeve; but whenever he 
saw that Rastignac was bending under the strain of the burden, 
he made 4 as if he suspected something,’ and reunited the 
lovers by a common dread.” 

“lean imagine that a wealthy wife would have put Ras- 
tignac in the way of a living, and an honorable Jiving, but 
where did he pick up his fortune?” asked Couture. “A 
fortune so considerable as his at the present day must come 


THE FIRM OF N [ICING EH. ' 


297 


from somewhere ; and nobody ever accused him of inventing 
a good stroke of business.” 

“ Somebody left it to him,” said Finot. 

“Who?” asked Blondet. 

“ Some fool that he came across,” suggested Couture. 

“ He did not steal the whole of it, my little dears,” said 
Bixiou. 

“ Let not your terrors rise to fever-heat, 

Our age is lenient with those that cheat. 

Now, I will tell you about the beginnings of his fortune. 
In the first place, honor to talent ! Our friend is not a 
‘chap/ as Finot describes him, but a gentleman in the 
English sense, who knows the cards and knows the game ; 
whom, moreover, the gallery respects. Rastignac has quite 
as much intelligence as is needed at a given moment, 
as if a soldier should make his courage payable at ninety 
days* sight, with three witnesses and guarantees. He may 
seem captious, wrong-headed, inconsequent, vacillating, and 
without any fixed opinions ; but let something serious turn 
up, some combination to scheme out, he will not scatter him- 
self like Blondet here, who chooses these occasions to look at 
things from his neighbor’s point of view. Rastignac concen- 
trates himself, pulls himself together, looks for the point to 
carry by storm, and goes full tilt for it. He charges like a 
Murat, breaks squares, pounds away at shareholders, pro- 
moters, and the whole crowd, and returns, when the breach is 
made, to his lazy, careless life. Once more he becomes the 
man of the South, the man of pleasure, the trifling, idle 
Rastignac. He has earned the right of lying in bed till noon 
because a crisis never finds him asleep.” 

“So far so good, but just get to his fortune,” said Finot. 

“ Bixiou will dash that off at a stroke,” replied Blondet. 
“ Rastignac’s fortune was Delphine de Nucingen, a remarkable 
woman ; she combines boldness with foresight.” 


298 


THE FIRM OF NUCINGEN. 


“ Did she ever lend you money?” inquired Bixiou. 
Everybody burst out laughing. 

“You are mistaken in her,” said Couture, speaking to 
Blondet; “ her cleverness simply consists in making more or 
less piquant remarks, in loving Rastignac with tedious fidelity, 
and obeying him blindly. She is a regular Italian.” 

“Money apart,” Andoche Finot put in sourly. 

“Oh, come, come,” said Bixiou coaxingly; “after what 
we have just been saying, will you venture to blame poor 
Rastignac for living at the expense of the firm of Nucingen, 
for being installed in furnished rooms precisely as La Torpille 
was once installed by our friend des Lupeaulx? You would 
sink to the vulgarity of the Rue Saint-Denis ! First of all, 
i in the abstract,’ as Royer-Collard says, the question may 
abide the ‘ Kritik of Pure Reason ; ’ as for the impure reason 
that ” 

“ There he goes ! ” said Finot, turning to Blondet. 

“But there is reason in what he says,” exclaimed Blondet. 
“The problem is a very old one; it was the grand secret of 
the famous duel between La Chataigneraie and Jarnac. It 
was cast up to Jarnac that he was on good terms with his 
mother-in-law, who, loving him only too well, equipped him 
sumptuously. When a thing is so true, it ought not to be 
said. Out of devotion to Henry II., who permitted himself 
this slander, La Chataigneraie took it upon himself, and there 
followed the duel which enriched the French language with 
the expression coup dc Jarnac .” 

“Oh! does it go so far back? Then it is noble?” said 
Finot. 

“ As proprietor of newspapers and reviews of old standing, 
you are not bound to know that,” said Blondet. 

“There are women,” Bixiou gravely resumed, “and for 
that matter, men too, who can cut their lives in two and give 
away but one-half. (Remark how I word my phrase for you 
in humanitarian language.) For these, all material interests 


THE FIRM OF NUCINGEN. 


299 


lie without the range of sentiment. They give their time, 
their life, their honor to a woman, and hold that between them- 
selves it is not the thing to meddle with bits of tissue paper 
bearing the legend, * Forgery is punishable with death. ' And 
equally they will take nothing from a woman. Yes, the 
whole thing is debased if fusion of interests follows on fusion 
of souls. This is a doctrine much preached, and very seldom 
practiced.” 

“ Oh, what rubbish ! ” cried Blondet. “ The Marechal de 
Richelieu understood something of gallantry, and he settled 
an allowance of a thousand louis d’or on Madame de la 
Popelinidre after that affair of the hiding-place behind the 
hearth. Agnes Sorel, in all simplicity, took her fortune to 
Charles VII., and the King accepted it. Jacques Coeur kept 
the crown for France ; he was allowed to do it, and, woman- 
like, France was ungrateful.” 

“Gentlemen,” said Bixiou, “a love that does not imply an 
indissoluble friendship, to my thinking, is momentary liber- 
tinage. What sort of entire surrender is it that keeps some- 
thing back ? Between these two diametrically opposed doc- 
trines, the one as profoundly immoral as the other, there is no 
possible compromise. It seems to me that any shrinking from 
a complete union is surely due to a belief that the union cannot 
last, and if so, farewell to illusion. The passion that does not 
believe that it will last forever is a hideous thing. (Here is 
pure unadulterated Fenelon for you !) At the same time, 
those who know the world, the observer, the man of the world, 
the wearers of irreproachable gloves and ties, the men who do 
not blush to marry a woman for her money, proclaim the 
necessity of a complete separation of sentiment and interest. 
The other sort are lunatics that love and imagine that they 
and the woman they love are the only two beings in the 
world ; for them millions are dirt ; the glove or the camellia 
flower that She wore is worth millions. If the squandered 
filthy lucre is never to be found again in their possession, you 

X 


300 


THE FIRM OF NUC INGEN. 


find the remains of floral relics hoarded in dainty cedar-wood 
boxes. They cannot distinguish themselves one from the 
other ; for them there is no ‘ I ’ left. Thou — that is their 
Word made flesh. What can you do? Can you stop the 
course of this ‘ hidden disease of the heart ? * There are fools 
that love without calculation, and wise men that calculate 
while they love.” 

“To my thinking Bixiou is sublime,” cried Blondet. 
“ What does Finot say to it ? ” 

“Anywhere else,” said Finot, drawing himself up in his 
cravat, “anywhere else, I should say, with the 1 gentlemen;* 
but here, I think ” 

“With the scoundrelly scapegraces with whom you have 
the honor to associate? ” said Bixiou. 

“Upon my word, yes.” 

“And you?” asked Bixiou, turning to Couture. 

“ Stuff and nonsense ! ” cried Couture. “ The woman that 
will not make a stepping-stone of her body, that the man she 
singles out may reach his goal, is a woman that has no heart 
except for her own purposes.” 

“And you, Blondet?” 

“I do not preach, I practice.” 

“Very good,” rejoined Bixiou in his most ironical tones. 
“ Rastignac was not of your way of thinking. To take without 
repaying is detestable, and even rather bad form ; but to take 
that you may render a hundredfold, like the Lord, is a chival- 
rous deed. This was Rastignac’s view. He felt profoundly 
humiliated by his community of interests with Delphine de 
Nucingen ; I can tell you that he regretted it ; I have seen him 
deploring his position with tears in his eyes. Yes, he shed 
tears, he did, indeed — after supper. Well, now to our way of 
thinking ” 

“I say, you are laughing at us,” said Finot. 

“ Not the least in the world. We were talking of Rastignac. 
From your point of view his affliction would be a sign of his 


THE FIRM OF JVUCINGEAT. 


301 


corruption ; for by that time he was not nearly so much in 
love with Delphine. What would you have? he felt the 
prick in his iieart, poor fellow. But he was a man of noble 
descent and profound depravity, whereas we are virtuous 
artists. So Rastignac meant to enrich Delphine ; he was a 
poor man, she a rich woman. Would you believe it? he suc- 
ceeded. Rastignac, who might have fought at need, like 
Jarnac, went over to the opinion of Henri II. on the strength 
of his great maxim, ‘ There is no such thing as absolute right ; 
there are only circumstances.’ This brings us to the history 
of his fortune.” 

“You might just as well make a start with your story instead 
of drawing us on to traduce ourselves,” said Blondet with 
urbane good-humor. 

“Aha! my boy,” returned Bixiou, administering a little 
tap to the back of Blondet’s head, “ you are making up for 
lost time over the champagne ! ” 

“ Oh ! by the sacred name of shareholder, get on with your 
story ! ” cried Couture. 

“ I was within an ace of it,” retorted Bixiou, “ but you with 
your profanity have brought me to the climax.” 

“Then, are there shareholders in the tale?” inquired 
Finot. 

“Yes; rich as rich can be — like yours.” 

“It seems to me,” Finot began stiffly, “that some consid- 
eration is owing to a good fellow to whom you look for a bill 
for five hundred francs upon occasion ” 

“ Waiter ! ” called Bixiou. 

“ What do you want with the waiter ? ” asked Blondet. 

“ I want five hundred francs to repay Finot, so that I can 
tear up my I. O. U. and set my tongue free.” 

“Get on with your story,” said Finot, making believe to 
laugh. 

“ I take you all to witness that I am not the property of this 
insolent fellow, who fancies that my silence is worth no more 


302 


THE FIRM OF NUCINGEN. 


than five hundred francs. You will never be' a minister if you 
cannot gauge people’s consciences. There, my good Finot,” 
he added soothingly, “ I will get on with my story without 
personalities, and we shall be quits.” 

“ Now,” said Couture with a smile, “ he will begin to prove 
for our benefit that Nucingen made Rastignac’s fortune.” 

“ You are not so far out as you think,” returned Bixiou. 
“ You do not know what Nucingen is, financially speaking.” 

“ Do you know so much as a word as to his beginnings ? ” 
asked Blondet. 

“I have only known him in his own house,” said Bixiou, 
“ but we may have seen each other in the street in the old 
days.” 

“ The prosperity of the firm of Nucingen is one of the most 
extraordinary things seen in our days,” began Blondet. “ In 
1804 Nucingen’s name was scarcely known. At that time 
bankers would have shuddered at the idea of three hundred 
thousand francs’ worth of his acceptances in the market. The 
great capitalist felt his inferiority. How was he to get known ? 
He suspended payment. Good ! Every market rang with a 
name hitherto only known in Strasbourg and the Quartier 
Poissonniere. He issued deposit certificates to his creditors, 
and resumed payment ; forthwith people grew accustomed to 
his paper all over France. Then an unheard-of thing hap- 
pened — his paper revived, was in demand, and rose in value. 
Nucingen’s paper was much inquired for. The year 1815 
arrives, my banker calls in his capital, buys up Government 
stock before the battle of Waterloo, suspends payment again in 
the thick of the crisis, and meets his engagements with shares 
in the Wortschin mines, which he himself issued at twenty per 
cent, more than he gave for them ! Yes, gentlemen ! He 
took a hundred and fifty thousand bottles of champagne of 
Grandet to cover himself (foreseeing the failure of the virtuous 
parent of the present Comte d’Aubrion), and as much Bor- 
deaux wine of Duberghe at the same time. Those three hun- 


THE FIRM OF NUCINGEN. 


303 


dred thousand bottles which he took over (and took over at 
thirty sous apiece, my dear boy), he supplied at the price of six 
francs per bottle to the Allies in the Palais Royal during the 
foreign occupation between 1817 and 1819. Nucingen’s name 
and his paper acquired a European celebrity. The illustrious 
baron, so far from being engulfed like others, rose the higher 
for calamities. Twice his arrangements had paid holders of 
his paper uncommonly well ; he try to swindle them ? Impos- 
sible. He is supposed to be as honest a man as you will find. 
When he suspends payment a third time, his paper will circu- 
late in Asia, Mexico, and Australia, among the aborigines. 
No one but Ouvrard saw through this Alsacian banker, the son 
of some Jew or other converted by ambition ; Ouvrard said, 
f When Nucingen lets gold go, you may be sure that it is to 
catch diamonds.’ ” 

“His crony, du Tillet, is just such another,” said Finot. 
“And, mind yGU, that of birth du Tillet has just precisely so 
much as is necessary to exist ; the chap had not a farthing in 
1814, and you see what he is now; and he has done some- 
thing that none of us has managed to do (I am not speaking 
of you, Couture), he has had friends instead of enemies. In 
fact, he has kept his past life so quiet, that unless you rake 
the sewers you are not likely to find out that he was an assist- 
ant in a perfumer’s shop in the Rue Saint-Honore, no further 
back than 1814.”* 

“Tut, tut, tut ! ” said Bixiou, “do not think of comparing 
Nucingen with a little dabbler like du Tillet, a jackal that gets 
on in life through his sense of smell. He scents a carcase 
by instinct, and comes in time to get the best bone. Beside, 
just look at the two men. The one has a sharp-pointed face 
like a cat, he is thin and lanky; the other is cubical, fat, 
heavy as a sack, imperturbable as a diplomatist. Nucingen 
has a thick, heavy hand, and lynx eyes that never light up ; 
his depths are not in front, but behind ; he is inscrutable, 
* See " C6sar Birotteau.” 


304 


THE FIRM OF NUCINGEN. 


you never see what he is making for. Whereas du Tibet’s 
cunning, as Napoleon said of somebody (I have forgotten the 
name), is like cotton spun too fine, it breaks.” 

“ I do not myself see that Nucingen has any advantage over 
du Tillet,” said Blondet, “unless it is that he has the sense 
to see that a capitalist ought not to rise higher than a baron’s 
rank, while du Tillet has a mind to be an Italian count.” 

“Blondet — one word, my boy,” put in Couture. “In the 
first place, Nucingen dared to say that honesty is simply a 
question of appearances ; and, secondly, to know him well you 
must be in business yourself. With him banking is but a 
single department, and a very small one; he holds Govern- 
ment contracts for wines, wools, indigoes — anything, in short, 
on which any profit can be made. He has an all-round 
genius. The elephant of finance would contract to deliver 
votes on a division, or the Greeks to the Turks. For him 
business means the sum-total of varieties; as Cousin would 
say, the unity of specialties. Looked at in this way, banking 
becomes a kind of statecraft in itself, requiring a powerful 
head ; and a man thoroughly tempered is drawn on to set 
himself above the laws of a morality that cramps him.” 

“Right, my son,” said Blondet, “but we, and we alone, 
can comprehend that this means bringing war into the finan 
cial world. A banker is a conquering general making sacri- 
fices on a tremendous scale to gain ends that no one perceives ; 
his soldiers are private people’s interests. He has stratagems 
to plan out, partisans to bring into the field, ambushes to set, 
towns to take. Most men of this stamp are so close upon the 
borders of politics that in the end they are drawn into public 
life, and thereby lose their fortunes. The firm of Necker, for 
instance, was ruined in this way; the famous Samuel Bernard 
was all but ruined. Some great capitalist in every age makes 
a colossal fortune, and leaves behind him neither fortune 
nor a family ; there was the firm of Paris Brothers, for in- 
stance, that helped to pull down Law; there was Law himself 


THE FIRM OF NUCINGEN. 


305 


(beside whom other promoters of companies are but pigmies) ; 
there was Bouret and Beaujon — none of them left any repre- 
sentative. Finance, like Time, devours its own children. If 
the banker is to perpetuate himself he must found a noble 
house, a dynasty ; like the Fuggers of Antwerp, that lent 
money to Charles V. and were created Princes of Baben hausen, 
a family that exists at this day — in the ‘Almanach de Gotha.’ 
The instinct of self-preservation, working it may be uncon- 
sciously, leads the banker to seek a title. Jacques Cceur was 
the founder of the great noble house of Noirmoutier, extinct 
in the reign of Louis XIII. What power that man had ! He 
was ruined for making a legitimate king ; and he died, prince 
of an island in the Archipelago, where he built a magnificent 
cathedral.” 

“ Oh ! you are giving us a historical lecture, we are wander- 
ing away from the present ; the crown has no right of confer- 
ring nobility, and barons and counts are made with closed 
doors; more is the pity ! ” said Finot. 

“You regret the times of the savonnette a when you 

could buy an office that ennobled?” asked Bixiou. “You 
are right. Je reviens a nos moutons (I return to our muttons). 
Do you know Beaudenord ? No ? no ? no ? Ah, well ! See 
how all things pass away ! Poor fellow, ten years ago he was 
the flower of dandyism ; and now, so thoroughly absorbed 
that you no more know him than Finot just now knew the 
origin of the expression ‘ coup de Jarnac ’ — I repeat that sim- 
ply for the sake of illustration, and not to tease you, Finot,. 
Well, it is a fact, he belonged to the Faubourg Saint-Germain. 

“Beaudenord is the first pigeon that I will bring on the 
scene. And, in the first place, his name was Godefroid de 
Beaudenord; neither Finot, nor Blondet, nor Couture, nor I 
are likely to undervalue such an advantage as that ! After a 
ball, when a score of pretty women stand behooded waiting 
for their carriages, with their husbands and adorers at their 
* Soap-cake for the base-born. 


20 


306 


THE FIRM OF NUCINGFN. 


sides, Beaudenord could hear his people called without a pang 
of mortification. In the second place, he rejoiced in the 
full complement of limbs ; he was whole and sound, had 
no mote in his eyes, no false hair, no artificial calves ; he 
was neither knock-kneed nor bandy-legged, his dorsal column 
was straight, his waist slender, his hands white and shapely. 
His hair was black ; he was of a complexion neither too pink, 
like a grocer’s assistant, nor yet too brown, like a Calabrese. 
Finally, and this is an essential point, Beaudenord was not too 
handsome, like some of our friends that look rather too much 
of professional beauties to be anything else ; but no more of 
that ; we have said it, it is shocking ! Well, he was a crack 
shot, and sat a horse to admiration ; he had fought a duel for 
a trifle, and had not killed his man. 

“ If you wish to know in what pure, complete, and unadul- 
terated happiness consists in this nineteenth century in Paris 
— the happiness, that is to say, of a young man of twenty-six 
— do you realize that you must enter into the infinitely small 
details of existence? Beaudenord’s bootmaker had precisely 
hit off his style of foot ; he was well shod ; his tailor loved to 
clothe him. Godefroid neither rolled his r’s nor lapsed into 
Normanisms nor Gascon ; he spoke pure and correct French, 
and tied his cravat correctly (like Finot). He had neither 
father nor mother — such luck had he ! — and his guardian was 
the Marquis d’Aiglemont, his cousin by marriage. He could 
go among city people as he chose, and the Faubourg Saint- 
Germain could make no objection ; for, fortunately, a young 
bachelor is allowed to make his own pleasure his sole rule of 
life, he is at liberty to betake himself wherever amusement is 
to be found, and to shun the gloomy places where cares 
flourish and multiply. Finally, he had been vaccinated (you 
know what I mean, Blondet). 

“ And yet, in spite of all these virtues,” continued Bixiou, 
“ he might very well have been a very unhappy young man. 
Eh ! eh ! that word happiness, unhappily, seems to us to mean 


THE FIRM OF NUCINGEN. 


307 


something absolute, a delusion which sets so many wiseacres 
inquiring what happiness is. A very clever woman said that 
* Happiness was where you chose to put it.’ ” 

“She formulated a dismal truth,” said Blondet. 

“And a moral,” added Finot. 

“ Double distilled,” said Blondet. “ Happiness, like Good, 
like Evil, is relative. Wherefore La Fontaine used to hope 
that in course of time the damned would feel as much at 
home in hell as a fish in water.” 

“La Fontaine’s sayings are known in Philistia ! ” putin 
Bixiou. 

“ Happiness at six-and-twenty in Paris is not the happiness 
of six-and-twenty at — say Blois,” continued Blondet, taking 
no notice of the interruption. “And those that proceed from 
this text to rail at the instability of opinion are either knaves 
or fools for their pains. Modern medicine, which passed (it 
is its fairest title to glory) from a hypothetical to a positive 
science, through the influence of the great analytical school 
of Paris, has proved beyond a doubt that a man is periodically 
renewed throughout ” 

“ New haft, new blade, like Jeannot’s knife, and yet you 
think that he is still the same man,” broke in Bixiou. “ So 
there are several lozenges in the harlequin’s coat that we call 
happiness ; and— well, there was neither hole nor stain in 
this Godefroid’s costume. A young man of six-and-twenty, 
who would be happy in love, who would be loved, that is to 
say, not for his blossoming youth, nor for his wit, nor for his 
figure, but spontaneously, and not even merely in return for 
his own love; a young man, I say, who has found love in the 
abstract, to quote Royer-Collard, might yet very possibly find 
never a farthing in the purse which She, loving and beloved, 
embroidered for him ; he might owe rent to his landlord ; he 
might be unable to pay the bootmaker before mentioned ; his 
very tailor, like France herself, might at last show signs of 
disaffection. In short, he might have love and yet be poor. 


308 


THE FIRM OF NUCINGEN. 


And poverty spoils a young man’s happiness, unless he holds 
our transcendental views of the fusion of interests. I know 
nothing more wearing than happiness within combined with 
adversity without. It is as if you had one leg freezing in the 
draught from the door, and the other half-roasted by a brasier 
— as I have at this moment. I hope to be understood. 
Comes there an echo from thy vest-pocket, Blondet ? Be- 
tween ourselves, let the heart alone, it spoils the intellect. 

“ Let us resume. Godefroid de Beaudenord was respected 
by his tradespeople, for they were paid with tolerable regu- 
larity. The witty woman before quoted — I cannot give her 
name, for she is still living, thanks to her want of heart ” 

“ Who is this? ” 

“The Marquise d’Espard. She said that a young man 
ought to live on an entresol ; there should be no sign of 
domesticity about the place ; no cook, no kitchen, an old 
manservant to wait upon him, and no pretense of a perma- 
nence. In her opinion, any other sort of establishment is bad 
form. Godefroid de Beaudenord, faithful to this programme, 
lodged on an entresol on the Quai Malaquais ; he had, how- 
ever, been obliged to have this much in common with mar- 
ried couples, he had put a bedstead in his room, though for 
that matter it was so narrow that he seldom slept in it. An 
Englishwoman might have visited his rooms and found nothing 
‘ improper ’ there. Finot, you have yet to learn the great 
law of the ‘ Improper ’ that rules Britain. But, for the sake 
of the bond between us — that bill for a thousand francs — I 
will just give you some idea of it. I have been in England 
myself. I will give him wit enough for a couple of thousand,” 
he added in an aside to Blondet. 

“ In England, Finot, you grow extremely intimate with a 
woman in the course of an evening, at a ball or wherever it 
is ; next day you meet her in the street and look as though 
you knew her again — ‘ improper.’ At dinner you discover a 
delightful man beneath your left-hand neighbor’s dress-coat ; 


THE FIRM OF NUC1JVGEN. 


309 


a clever man ; no high-mightiness, no constraint, nothing of 
an Englishman about him. In accordance with the tradition 
of French breeding, so urbane, so gracious as they are, you 
address your neighbor — ‘improper.’ At a ball you walk up 
to a pretty woman to ask her to dance — * improper.’ You wax 
enthusiastic, you argue, laugh, and give yourself out, you fling 
yourself heart and soul into the conversation, you give expres- 
sion to your real feelings, you play when you are at the card- 
table, chat while you chat, eat while you eat — ‘ improper ! 
improper ! improper ! ’ Stendhal, one of the cleverest and 
profoundest minds of the age, hit off the ‘ improper * excel- 
lently well when he said that such-and-such a British peer did 
not dare to cross his legs when he sat alone before his own 
hearth for fear of being improper. An English gentlewoman, 
were she one of the rabid ‘ Saints * — that most siraitest sect of 
Protestants that would leave their whole family to starve if the 
said family did anything ‘ improper ’ — may play the deuce’s 
own delight in her bedroom, and need not be ‘ improper,’ but 
she would look on herself as lost if she received a visit from a 
man of her acquaintance in the aforesaid room. Thanks to 
propriety, London and its inhabitants will be found petrified 
some of these days.” 

“And to think that there are asses here in France that 
want to import the solemn tomfoolery that the English keep 
up among themselves with that admirable self-possession which 
you know!” added Blondet. “It is enough to make any 
man shudder if he has seen the English at home, and recollects 
the charming, gracious French manners. Sir Walter Scott 
was afraid to paint women as they are for fear of being ‘ im- 
proper; ’ and at the close of his life repented of the creation 
of the great character of Effle in 1 The Heart of Midlothian.’ ” 

“ Do you wish not to be ‘ improper ’ in England ?” asked 
Bixiou, addressing Finot. 

“Well?” 

“ Go to the Tuileries and look at a figure there, something 


310 


THE FIRM OF NUCINGEN. 


like a fireman carved in marble (‘Themistocles,’ the statuary 
calls it), try to walk like the commandant’s statue, and you 
will never be ‘ improper.’ It was through strict observance of 
the great law of the /^proper that Godefroid’s happiness be- 
came complete. Here is the story : 

“ Beaudenord had a tiger, not a ‘ groom,’ as they write that 
know nothing of society. The tiger, a diminutive Irish page, 
called Paddy, Toby, Joby (which you please), was three feet 
in height by twenty inches in breadth, a weasel-faced infant, 
with nerves of steel tempered in fire-water, and agile as a 
squirrel. He drove a landau with a skill never yet at fault in 
London or Paris. He had a lizard’s eye, as sharp as my own, 
and he could mount a horse like the elder Franconi. With 
the rosy cheeks and yellow hair of one of Ruben’s Madonnas, 
he was double-faced as a prince, and as knowing as an old 
attorney ; in short, at the age of ten he was nothing more nor 
less than a blossom of depravity, gambling and swearing, 
partial to jam and punch, pert as a feuilleton (news-skit), im- 
pudent and light-fingered as any Paris street-arab. He had 
been a source of honor and profit to a well-known English 
lord, for whom he had already won seven hundred thousand 
francs on the racecourse. The aforesaid nobleman set no 
small store on Toby. His tiger was a curiosity, the very 
smallest tiger in town. Perched aloft on the back of a thor- 
oughbred, Joby looked like a hawk. Yet — the great man dis- 
missed him. Not for greediness, not for dishonesty, nor 
murder, nor for criminal conversation, nor for bad manners, 
nor rudeness to my lady, nor for cutting holes in my lady’s 
own woman’s pockets, nor because he had been * got at ’ by 
some of his master’s rivals on the turf, nor for playing games 
of a Sunday, nor for bad behavior of any sort or description. 
Toby might have done all these things, he might even have 
spoken to milord before milord spoke to him, and his noble 
master might, perhaps, have pardoned that breach of the law- 
domestic. Milord would have put up with a good deal from 


THE FIRM OF NUCINGEN. 


311 


Toby ; he was very fond of him. Toby could drive a tandem 
dog-cart, riding on the wheeler, postillion fashion ; his legs 
did not reach the shafts, he looked in fact very much like one 
of the cherub heads circling about the Eternal Father in old 
Italian pictures. But an English journalist wrote a delicious 
description of the little angel, in the course of which he said 
that Paddy was quite too pretty for a tiger ; in fact, he offered 
to bet that Paddy was a tame tigress. The description, on the 
heads of it, was calculated to poison minds and end in some- 
thing 1 improper.’ And the superlative of ‘ improper ’ is the 
way to the gallows. Milord’s circumspection was highly ap- 
proved by my lady. 

“ But poor Toby, now that his precise position in insular 
zoology had been called in question, found himself hopelessly 
out of place. At that time Godefroid had blossomed out at 
the French Embassy in London, where he learned the adven- 
tures of Joby, Toby, Paddy. Godefroid found the infant 
weeping over a pot of jam (he had already lost the guineas 
with which milord gilded his misfortune). Godefroid took 
possession of him ; and so it fell out that on his return among 
us he brought back with him the sweetest thing in tigers from 
England. He was known by his tiger — as Couture is known 
by his waistcoats — and found no difficulty in entering the 
fraternity of the club yclept to-day the Grammont. He had 
renounced the diplomatic career; he ceased accordingly to 
alarm the susceptibilities of the ambitious ; and as he had no 
very dangerous amount of intellect, he was well-looked upon 
everywhere. 

“ Some of us would feel mortified if we saw only smiling 
faces wherever we went ; we enjoy the sour contortions of 
envy. Godefroid did not like to be disliked. Every one has 
his taste. Now for the solid, practical aspects of life ! 

“ The distinguishing feature of his chambers, where I have 
licked my lips over breakfast more than once, was a mysterious 
dressing-closet, nicely decorated, and comfortably appointed, 


312 


THE FIRM OF NUCINGEN. 


with a grate in it and a bath-tub. It gave upon a narrow 
staircase, the folding doors were noiseless, the locks well 
oiled, the hinges discreet, the window-panes of frosted glass, 
the curtain impervious to light. While the bedroom was, as 
it ought to have been, in a fine disorder which would suit 
the most exacting painter in water-colors ; while everything 
therein was redolent of the bohemian life of a young man of 
fashion, the dressing-closet was like a shrine — white, spotless, 
neat, and warm. There were no draughts from door or win- 
dow, the carpet had been made soft for bare feet hastily put 
to the floor in a sudden panic of alarm — which stamps him as 
your thoroughbred dandy that knows life ; for here, in a few 
moments, he may show himself either a noodle or a master in 
those little details in which a man’s character is revealed. 
The marquise previously quoted — no, it was the Marquise de 
Rochefide — came out of that dressing-closet in a furious rage, 
and never went back again. She discovered nothing ‘ im- 
proper ’ in it. Godefroid used to keep a little cupboard full 
of ” 

“ Waistcoats ? ” suggested Finot. 

“ Come, now, just like you, great Turcaret that you are. 
(I shall never form that fellow.) Why, no. Full of cakes, 
and fruit, and dainty little flasks of Malaga and Lunel ; an 
en cas de nuit in Louis Quatorze’s style ; anything that can 
tickle the delicate and well-bred appetite of sixteen quarter- 
ings. A knowing old manservant, very strong in matters 
veterinary, waited on the horses and groomed Godefroid. 
He had been with the late Monsieur de Beaudenord, Gode- 
froid’s father, and bore Godefroid an inveterate affection, a 
kind of heart complaint which has almost disappeared among 
domestic servants since savings banks were established. 

•* All material well-being is based upon arithmetic. You, 
to whom Paris is known down to its very excrescences, will 
see that Beaudenord must have required about seventeen thou- 
sand iivres per annum ; for he paid some seventeen francs of 


THE FIRM OF NUCINGErf. 


313 


taxes and spent a thousand crowns on his own whims. Well, 
dear boys, when Godefroid came of age, the Marquis d’Aigle- 
mont submitted to him such an account of his trust as none 
of us would be likely to give a nephew ; Godefroid’s name 
was inscribed as the owner of eighteen thousand livres of 
rentes (government stock), a remnant of his father’s wealth 
spared by the harrow of the great reduction under the Republic 
and the hailstorms of Imperial arrears. D’Aiglemont, that 
upright guardian, also put his ward in possession of some thirty 
thousand francs of savings invested with the firm of Nucingen; 
saying, with all the charm of a great lord and the indulgence 
of a soldier of the Empire, that he had contrived to put it 
aside for his ward’s young man’s follies. 4 If you will take 
my advice, Godefroid,’ added he, 4 instead of squandering 
the money like a fool, as so many young men do, let it go in 
follies that will be useful to you afterward. Take an attache’s 
post at Turin, and then go to Naples, and from Naples to 
London, and you will be amused and learn something for 
your money. Afterward, if you think of a career, the time 
and the money will not have been thrown away.’ The late 
lamented d’Aiglemont had more sense than people credited 
him with, which is more than can be said of some of us.” 

44 A young fellow that starts with an assured income of 
eighteen thousand livres at one-and-twenty is lost,” said 
Couture. 

“ Unless he is miserly or very much above the ordinary 
level,” added Blondet. 

4 4 Well, Godefroid sojourned in the four capitals of Italy,” 
continued Bixiou. 44 He lived in England and Germany, he 
spent some little time at St. Petersburg, he ran over Holland ; 
but he parted company with the aforesaid thirty thousand 
francs by living as if he had thirty thousand a year. Every- 
where he found the same supreme de volatile (sublime poultry), 
the same aspics, and French wines ; he heard French spoken 
wherever he went — in short, he never got away from Paris. 


314 


THE FIRM OF NUCINGEN. 


He ought, of course, to have tried to deprave his disposition, 
to fence himself in triple brass, to get rid of his illusions, to 
learn to hear anything said without a blush, and to master the 
inmost secrets of the Powers. Pooh ! with a good deal of 
trouble he equipped himself with four languages — that is to 
say, he laid in a stock of four words for one idea. Then he 
came back, and certain tedious dowagers, styled ‘ conquests ’ 
abroad, were left disconsolate. Godefroid came back, shy, 
scarcely formed, a good fellow with a confiding disposition, 
incapable of saying ill of any one who honored him with an 
admittance to his house, too stanch to be a diplomatist — 
altogether he was what we call a thoroughly whole-souled 
good fellow.” 

“ To cut it short, a kid with eighteen thousand livres per 
annum to drop over the first investment that turns up,” said 
Couture. 

“ That confounded Couture has such a habit of anticipating 
dividends that he is anticipating the end of my tale. Where 
was I ? Oh ! Beaudenord came back. When he took up his 
abode on the Quai Malaquais, it came to pass that a thousand 
francs over and above his needs was altogether insufficient to 
keep up his share of a box at the Italiens and the opera 
properly. When he lost twenty-five or thirty louis at play at 
one swoop, naturally he paid ; when he won, he spent the 
money ; so should we if we were fools enough to be drawn into 
a bet. Beaudenord, feeling pinched with his eighteen thousand 
francs, saw the necessity of creating what we to-day call a 
balance in hand. It was a great notion of his ‘ not to get 
too deep.’ He took counsel of his sometime guardian. 
‘The funds are now at par, my dear boy,’ quoth d’Aigle- 
mont ; ‘ sell out. I have sold out mine and my wife’s. 
Nucingen has all my capital, and is giving me six per cent.; 
do likewise, you will have one per cent, the more upon your 
capital, and with that you will be quite comfortable.’ 

“ In three days’ time our Godefroid was comfortable. His 


THE FIRM OF NLCINGEN. 


*15 

increase of income exactly supplied his superfluities; his 
material happiness was complete. 

“ Suppose that it were possible to read the minds of all the 
young men in Paris at one glance (as, it appears, will be done 
at the Day of Judgment with all the millions upon millions 
that have groveled in all spheres, and worn all uniforms or 
the uniform of nature), and to ask them whether happiness at 
six-and-twenty is or is not made up of the following items — 
to wit : to own a saddle-horse and a tilbury, or a cab, with a 
fresh, rosy-faced Toby, Joby, Paddy no bigger than your fist, 
and to hire an unimpeachable brougham for twelve francs an 
evening ; to appear elegantly arrayed, agreeably to the laws 
that regulate a man’s clothes, at eight o’clock, noon, four 
o’clock in the afternoon, and in the evening; to be well re- 
ceived at every embassy, and to cull the short-lived flowers of 
superficial, cosmopolitan friendships; to be not insufferably 
handsome, to carry your head, your coat and your name well ; 
to inhabit a charming little entresol after the pattern of the 
rooms just described on the Quai Malaquais; to be able to ask 
a party of friends to dine at the Rocher de Cancale without a 
previous consultation with your trousers* pocket ; never to be 
pulled up in any rational project by the words, ‘And the 
money?’ and, finally, to be able to renew at pleasure the 
pink rosettes that adorn the ears of your three thoroughbreds 
and the lining of your hat? 

“ To such inquiry any ordinary young man (and we our- 
selves that are not ordinary men) would reply that the happi- 
ness is incomplete ; that it is like the Madeleine without the 
altar; that a man must love and be loved, or love without 
return, or be loved without loving, or love at cross-purposes. 
Now for happiness as a mental condition. 

“ In January, 1823, after Godefroid de Beaudenord had set 
foot in the various social circles which it pleased him to enter, 
and knew his way about in them, and felt himself secure amid 
these joys, he saw the necessity of a sunshade — the advantage 


316 


THE FIRM OF NtJCINGEN. 


of having a great lady to complain of, instead of chewing the 
stems of roses bought for ten sous apiece of Madame Prevost, 
after the manner of the callow youngsters that chirp and cackle 
in the lobbies of the opera, like chickens in a coop. In short, 
he resolved to centre his ideas, his sentiments, his affections 
upon a woman, one woman / — La Phamme ! Ah ! 

“At first he conceived the preposterous notion of an un- 
happy passion, and gyrated for a while about his fair cousin, 
Mme. d’ Aiglemont, not perceiving that she had already danced 
the waltz in ‘ Faust * with a diplomatist. The year ’25 went 
by, spent in tentatives, in futile flirtations, and an unsuccessful 
quest. The loving object of which he was in search did not 
appear. Passion is extremely rare ; and in our time as many 
barriers have been raised against passion in social life as barri- 
cades in the streets. In truth, my brothers, the ‘ improper ' 
is gaining upon us, I tell you ! 

“As we incur reproach for following on the heels of portrait 
painters, auctioneers, and fashionable dressmakers, I will not 
inflict any description upon you of Her in whom Godefroid 
recognized the female of his species. Age, nineteen ; height, 
four feet eleven inches ; fair hair, eyebrows idem , blue eyes, 
forehead neither high nor low, curved nose, little mouth, 
short turned-up chin, oval face ; distinguishing signs — none. 
Such was the description on the passport of the beloved object. 
You will not ask more than the police, or their worships the 
mayors, of all the towns and communes of France, the gen- 
darmes and the rest of the powers that be ? In other respects 
— I give you my word for it — she was a rough sketch of a 
Venus de* Medici. 

“ The first time that Godefroid went to one of the balls for 
which Madame de Nucingen enjoyed a certain not undeserved 
reputation, he caught a glimpse of his future lady-love in a 
quadrille, and was set marveling by that height of four feet 
eleven inches. The fair hair rippled in a shower of curls 
about the little girlish head, she looked as fresh as a naiad 


THE FIRM OF NtICiNGEH. 


31 ? 


peeping out through the crystal pane of her stream to take a 
look at the spring flowers. (This is quite in the modern style, 
strings of phrases as endless as the macaroni on the table a 
while ago.) On that * eyebrows idetn 9 (no offense to the pre- 
fect of police) Parny, that writer of light and playful verse, 
would have hung half-a-dozen couplets, comparing them very 
agreeably to Cupid’s bow, at the same time bidding us observe 
that the dart was beneath ; the said dart, however, was neither 
very potent nor very penetrating, for as yet it was controlled 
by the namby-pamby sweetness of a Mademoiselle de la Val- 
li6re as depicted on fire-screens, at the moment when she 
solemnizes her betrothal in the sight of heaven, any solemni- 
zation before the registrar being quite out of the question. 

“ You know the effect of fair hair and blue eyes in the soft, 
voluptuous decorous dance? Such a girl does not knock 
audaciously at your heart, like the dark-haired damsels that 
seem to say after the fashion of Spanish beggars : ‘ Your money 
or your life ; give me five francs or take my contempt ! * 
These insolent and somewhat dangerous beauties may find 
favor in the sight of many men, but to my thinking the blonde 
that has the good-fortune to look extremely tender and 
yielding, while foregoing none of her rights to scold, to tease, 
to use unmeasured language, to be jealous without grounds, 
to do anything, in short, that makes woman adorable — the 
fair-haired girl, I say, will be always more sure to marry than 
the ardent brunette. Firewood is dear, you see. 

“ Isaure, white as an Alsacienne (she first saw the • light at 
Strasbourg, and spoke German with a slight and very agreeable 
French accent), danced to admiration. Her feet, omitted on 
the passport, though they really might have found a place there 
under the heading * Distinguishing Signs/ were remarkable for 
their small size, and for that particular something which old- ^ 
fashioned dancing-masters used to call flic-flac , a something 
that put you in mind of Mademoiselle Mars’ agreeable de- 
livery, for all the Muses are sisters, and dancer and poet 


318 


THE FIRM OF NUCINGEN. 


alike have their feet upon the earth. Isaure’s feet spoke 
lightly and swiftly with a clearness and precision which 
augured well for the things of the heart. * Elle a du flic-flac ’ 
(she has some flic-flac), was old Marcel’s highest word of 
praise, and old Marcel was the dancing-master that deserved 
the epithet of 4 the Great.’ People used to say ‘the Great 
Marcel,’ as they said * Frederick the Great,’ and in Frederick’s 
time.” 

“ Did Marcel compose any ballets? ” inquired Finot. 

“Yes, something in the style of Les Quatre Elements (The 
Four Elements) and L' Europe gala?ite }} (The Gallants of 
Europe). 

“What times they were, when great nobles dressed the 
dancers ! ” said Finot. 

“Improper! ” said Bixiou. “ Isaure did not raise herself 
on the tips of her toes, she stayed on the ground, she swayed 
in the dance without jerks, and neither more nor less volup- 
tuously than a young lady ought to do. There was a profound 
philosophy in Marcel’s remark that every age and condition 
has its dance ; a married woman should not dance like a 
young girl, nor a little jackanapes like a capitalist, nor a sol- 
dier like a page ; he even went so far as to say that the in- 
fantry ought not to dance like the cavalry, and from this point 
he proceeded to classify the world at large. All these fine 
distinctions seem very far away.” 

“ Ah ! ” said Blondet, “ you have set your finger on a great 
calamity. If Marcel had been properly understood, there 
would have been no French Revolution.” 

“It had been Godefroid’s privilege to run over Europe,” 
resumed Bixiou, “ nor had he neglected his opportunities of 
making a thorough comparative study of European dancing. 
Perhaps but for profound diligence in the pursuit of what is 
usually held to be useless knowledge, he would never have 
fallen in love with this young lady ; as it was, out of the three 
hundred guests that crowded the handsome rooms in the Rue 


THE FIRM OF NUCINGEN. 


319 


Saint-Lazare, he alone comprehended the unpublished romance 
revealed by a garrulous quadrille. People certainly noticed 
Isaure d’Aldrigger’s dancing; but in this present century the 
cry is, ‘ Skim lightly over the surface, do not lean your weight 
on it ; * so one said (he was a notary’s clerk) : ‘ There is a 

girl that dances uncommonly well ; ’ another (a lady in a tur- 
ban) : ‘ There is a young lady that dances enchantingly ; * and 
a third (a woman of thirty) : i That little thing is not dancing 
badly.’ But to return to the great Marcel, let us parody his 
best-known saying with, * How much there is in an avant- 
deux.' ” 

“ And let us get on a little faster,” said Blondet ; “ you are 
maundering.” 

*' ‘ Isaure,” continued Bixiou, looking askance at Blondet, 
“ wore a simple white crepe dress with green ribbons ; she had 
a camellia in her hair, a camellia at her waist, another camellia 
at her skirt-hem, and a camellia ” 

“ Come, now ! here come Sancho’s three hundred goats.” 

“ Therein lies all literature, dear boy. Clarissa is a master- 
piece, there are fourteen volumes of her, and the most wooden- 
headed playwright would give you the whole of Clarissa in a 
single act. So long as I amuse you, what have you to com- 
plain of? That costume was positively lovely. Don’t you 
like camellias? Would you rather have dahlias? No? Very 
good, chestnuts then, here’s for you.” (And probably Bixiou 
flung a chestnut across the table, for we heard something drop 
on a plate.) 

“ I was wrong, I acknowledge it. Go on,” said Blondet. 

“I resume. ‘Pretty enough to marry, isn’t she?’ said 
Rastignac, coming up to Godefroid de Beaudenord, and in- 
dicating the little one with the spotless white camellias, every 
petal intact. 

“Rastignac being an intimate friend, Godefroid answered 
in a low voice, ‘ Well, so I was thinking. I was saying to 
myself that instead of enjoying my happiness with fear and 


320 


THE FIRM OF NUCINGEN, 


trembling at every moment ; instead of taking a world of 
trouble to whisper a word in an inattentive ear, of looking 
over the house at the Italiens to see if some one wears a 
red flower or a white in her hair, or watching along the Corso 
for a gloved hand on a carriage-door, as we used to do at 
Milan ; instead of snatching a mouthful of bun like a lackey 
finishing off a bottle behind a door, or wearing out one’s wits 
with giving and receiving letters like a postman — letters that 
consist not of a mere couple of tender lines, but expand to 
five folio volumes to-day and contract to a couple of sheets 
to-morrow (a tiresome practice) ; instead of dragging along 
over the ruts and dodging behind hedges — it would be better 
to give way to the adorable passion that Jean-Jacques Rous- 
seau envied, to fall frankly in love with a girl like Isaure, with 
a view to making her my wife, if upon exchange of sentiments 
our hearts respond to each other; to be Werther, in short, 
with a happy ending.’ 

“‘Which is a common weakness,’ returned Rastignac with- 
out laughing. ‘ Possibly in your place I might plunge into 
the unspeakable delights of that ascetic course ; it possesses 
the merits of novelty and originality, and it is not very expen- 
sive. Your Monna Lisa is sweet, but inane as music for the 
ballet; I give you warning.’ 

“Rastignac made this last remark in a way which set 
Beaudenord thinking that his friend had his own motives for 
disenchanting him ; Beaudenord had not been a diplomatist 
for nothing; he fancied that Rastignac wanted to cut him out. 
If a man mistakes his vocation, the false start none the less 
influences him for the rest of his life. Godefroid was so 
evidently smitten with Mademoiselle Isaure d’Aldrigger that 
Rastignac went off to a tall girl chatting in the card-room. 
‘Malvina,’ he said, lowering his voice, ‘your sister has just 
netted a fish worth eighteen thousand francs a year. He has 
a name, a manner, and a certain position in the world ; keep 
an eye upon them ; be careful to gain Isaure’s confidence; and 


THE FIRM OF NUC1NGEN. 


321 


if they philander, do not let her send a word to him unless 
you have seen it first * 

“ Toward two o’clock in the morning, Isaure was standing 
beside a diminutive Shepherdess of the Alps, a little woman 
of forty, coquettish as a Zerlina. A footman announced that 
‘ Madame la Baronne’s carriage stops the way,’ and Godefroid 
forthwith saw his beautiful maiden out of a German song draw 
her fantastical mother into the cloak-room, whither Malvina 
followed them ; and (boy that he was) he must needs go to 
discover into what pot of preserves the infant Joby had fallen, 
and had the pleasure of watching Isaure and Malvina coaxing 
that sparkling person, their mamma, into her pelisse, with all 
the little tender precautions required for a night journey in 
Paris. Of course, the girls on their side watched Beaudenord 
out of the corners of their eyes, as well-taught kittens watch a 
mouse, without seeming to see it at all. With a certain satis- 
faction Beaudenord noted the bearing, manner, and appear- 
ance of the tall, well-gloved Alsacian servant in livery who 
brought three pairs of fur-lined overshoes for his mistresses. 

“ Never were two sisters more unlike than Isaure and 
Malvina. Malvina the elder was tall and dark-haired, Isaure 
was short and fair, and her features were finely and delicately 
cut, while her sister’s were vigorous and striking. Isaure was 
one of those women who reign like queens through their 
weakness, such a woman as a schoolboy would feel it incum- 
bent upon him to protect ; Malvina was the Andalouse of 
Musset’s poem. As the sisters stood together, Isaure looked 
like a miniature beside a portrait in oils. 

“ ‘ She is rich ! ’ exclaimed Godefroid, going back to Ras- 
tignac in the ballroom. 

“‘Who?* 

“ ‘That young lady.* 

“‘Oh, Isaure d’ Aid rigger? Why, yes. The mother is a 
widow; Nucingen was once- a clerk in her husband’s bank at 
Strasbourg. Do you want to see them again ? Just turn off 
21 


322 


THE FIRM OF NUCINGEN. 


a compliment for Madame de Restaud ; she is giving a ball 
the day after to-morrow; the Baroness d’Aldrigger and her 
two daughters will be there. You- will have an invitation.’ 

“For three days Godefroid beheld Isaure in the camera 
obscura of his brain — his Isaure with her white camellias and 
the little ways she had with her head — saw her as you still see 
the bright thing on which you have been gazing after your eyes 
are shut, a picture grown somewhat smaller; a radiant, brightly 
colored vision flashing out of a vortex of darkness.” 

“Bixiou, you are dropping into phenomena, block us out 
our pictures,” put in Couture. 

“ Here you are, gentlemen ! Here is the picture you 
ordered ! ” (from the tones of Bixiou’S voice, he evidently was 
posing as a waiter.) “ Finot ! attention, one has to pull at 
your mouth as a jarvie [cab-driver] pulls at his jade. In Ma- 
dame Theodora Marguerite Wilhelmine Adolphus (of the firm 
of Adolphus and Company, Mannheim), relict of the late 
Baron d’Aldrigger, you might expect to find a stout, com- 
fortable German, compact and prudent, with a fair complexion 
mellowed to the tint of the foam on a pot of beer ; and as to 
virtues, rich in all the patriarchal good qualities that Germany 
possesses — in romances, that is to say. Well, there was not a 
gray hair in the frisky ringlets that she wore on either side of 
her face ; she was still as fresh and as brightly colored on the 
cheek-bones as a Nuremberg doll ; her eyes were lively and 
bright; a closely fitting, pointed bodice set off the slenderness 
of her waist. Her brow and temples were furrowed by a few 
involuntary wrinkles which, like Ninon, she would fain have 
banished from her head to her heel, but they persisted in 
tracing their zigzags in the more conspicuous place. The out- 
lines of the nose had somewhat fallen away, and the tip had 
reddened, and this was the more awkward because it matched 
the color on the cheek-bones. 

“ An only daughter and an heiress, spoilt by her father and 
mother, spoilt by her husband and the city of Strasbourg, 


THE FIRM OF NUCINGEN. 


323 


spoilt still by two daughters who worshiped their mother, the 
Baroness d’Aldrigger indulged a taste for rose color, short 
petticoats, and a knot of ribbon at the point of the tightly 
fitting corselet bodice. Any Parisian meeting the baroness 
on the boulevard would smile and condemn her outright ; he 
does not admit any plea of extenuating circumstances, like a 
modern jury on a case of fratricide. A scoffer is always super- 
ficial, and in consequence cruel ; the rascal never thinks of 
throwing the proper share of ridicule on society that made the 
individual what he is ; for Nature only makes dull animals of 
us, we owe the fool to artificial conditions.” 

“ The thing that I admire about Bixiou is his complete- 
ness,” said Blondet; “ whenever he is not gibing at others, he 
is laughing at himself.” 

“ I will be even with you for that, Blondet,” returned 
Bixiou in a significant tone. “If the little baroness was 
giddy, careless, selfish, and incapable in practical matters, 
she was not accountable for her sins ; the responsibility is 
divided between the firm of Adolphus and Company of 
Mannheim and Baron d’Aldrigger with his blind love for his 
wife. The baroness was as gentle as a lamb; she had a soft 
heart that was very readily moved; unluckily, the emotion 
never lasted long, but it was all the more frequently renewed. 

“ When the baron died, for instance, the Shepherdess all 
but followed him to the tomb, so violent and sincere was her 
grief, but — next morning there were green peas at lunch, she 
was fond of green peas, the delicious green peas calmed the 
crisis. Her daughters and her servants loved her so blindly 
that the whole household rejoiced over a circumstance that 
enabled them to hide the dolorous spectacle of the funeral 
from the sorrowing baroness. Isaure and Malvina would not 
allow their idolized mother to see their tears. 

“While the requiem was being chanted they diverted her 
thoughts to the choice of mourning dresses. While the coffin 
was placed in the huge, black and white, wax-besprinkled 


324 


THE FIRM OF NUCINGEN. 


catafalque that does duty for some three thousand dead in the 
course of its career — so I was informed by a philosophically- 
minded mute whom I once consulted on the point over a 
couple of glasses of petit blanc — while an indifferent choir was 
bawling the Dies irce , and a no less indifferent priest mum- 
bling the office for the dead, do you know what the friends of 
the departed were saying as, all dressed in black from head to 
foot, they sat or stood in the church ? (Here is the picture 
you ordered.) Stay, do you see them? 

“ ‘ How much do you suppose old d’Aldrigger will leave? ’ 
Desroches asked of Taillefer. You remember Taillefer that 
gave us the finest orgie ever known not long before he died ? ” 
“ But was Desroches an attorney in those days? ” 

“He was in treaty for a practice in 1822,” said Couture. 
“It was a bold thing to do, for he was the son of a poor clerk 
who never made more than eighteen hundred francs a year, 
and his mother sold stamped paper. But he worked very hard 
from 1818 to 1822. He was Derville’s fourth clerk when he 
came ; and in 1819 he was second ! ” 

“ Desroches? ” 

“Yes. Desroches, like the rest of us, once groveled in the 
poverty of Job. He grew so tired of wearing coats too tight 
and sleeves too short for him that he swallowed down the law 
in desperation and had just bought a bare license. He was a 
licensed attorney, without a penny, or a client, or any friends 
beyond our set ; and he was bound to pay interest on the 
purchase-money and the cautionary deposit beside.* ’ 

“ He used to make me feel as if I had met a tiger escaped 
from the Jardin des Plantes,” said Couture. “He was lean 
and red-haired, his eyes were the color of Spanish snuff, and 
his complexion was harsh. He looked cold and phlegmatic. 
He was hard upon the widow, pitiless to the orphan, and a 
terror to his clerks ; they were not allowed to waste a minute. 
Learned, crafty, double-faced, honey-tongued, never flying 
into a passion, rancorous in his judicial way.” 


THE FIRM OF NUCINGEN. 


325 


“But there is goodness in him,” cried Finot ; “he is de- 
voted to his friends. The first thing he did was to take 
Godeschal, Mariette’s brother, as his head-clerk.” 

“At Paris,” said Blondet, “there are attorneys of two 
shades. There is the honest man attorney ; he abides within 
the province of the law, pushes on his cases, neglects no one, 
never runs after business, gives his clients his honest opinion, 
and makes them compromise on doubtful points — he is a Der- 
ville, in short. Then there is the starveling attorney, to whom 
anything seems good provided that he is sure of expenses ; he 
will set, not mountains fighting, for he sells them, but planets; 
he will work to make the worse appear the better cause, and 
take advantage of a technical error to win the day for a rogue. 
If one of these fellows tries one of Maitre Gonin’s tricks once 
too often, the guild forces him to sell his connection. Des- 
roches, our friend Desroches, understood the full resources of 
a trade carried on in a beggarly way enough by poor devils ; 
he would buy up causes of men who feared to lose the day ; 
he plunged into chicanery with a fixed determination to make 
money by it. He was right ; he did his business very honestly. 
He found influence among men in public life by getting them 
out of awkward complications; there was our dear des Lu- 
peaulx, for instance, whose position was so deeply com- 
promised. And Desroches stood in need of influence; for, 
when he began, he was anything but well looked on at the 
court, and he who took so much trouble to rectify the errors 
of his clients was often in trouble himself. See now, Bixiou, 
to go back to the subject — How came Desroches to be in the 
church ? ” 

“ ‘ D’Aldrigger is leaving seven or eight hundred thousand 
francs/ Taillefer answered, addressing Desroches. 

“ ‘ Oh, pooh, there is only one man who knows how much 
they are worth/ put in Werbrust, a friend of the deceased. 

“‘Who?’ 

“ ‘ That fat rogue Nucingen ; he will go as far as the ceme- 


326 


THE FIRM OF NUCINGEN. 


tery; d’Aldrigger was his master once, and out of gratitude 
he put the old man’s capital into his business. * 

“ ‘The widow will soon feel a great difference.’ 

“ ‘ What do you mean ? * 

“ ‘ Well, d’ Aldrigger was so fond of his wife. Now, don’t 
laugh, people are looking at us.* 

“ ‘ Look, here comes du Tillet ; he is very late. The 
Epistle is just beginning.’ 

“ ‘ He will marry the eldest girl in all probability.’ 

“ * Is it possible ? ’ asked Desroches ; ‘ why, he is tied more 
than ever to Madame Roguin.’ 

“ ‘Tied — he ? You do not know him.* 

“‘Do you know how Nucingen and du Tillet stand?* 
asked Desroches. 

“ ‘ Like this,’ said Taillefer ; ‘ Nucingen is just the man 
to swallow down his old master’s* capital, and then to dis- 
gorge it.’ 

“ ‘ Ugh ! ugh ! ’ coughed Werbrust, ‘ these churches are 
confoundedly damp; ugh! ugh! What do you mean by 
“ disgorge it? ” ’ 

“ ‘ Well, Nucingen knows that du Tillet has a lot of money; 
he wants to marry him to Malvina ; but du Tillet is shy of 
Nucingen. To a looker-on, the game is good fun.* 

“ ‘ What ! * exclaimed Werbrust, ‘ is she old enough to 
marry ? How quickly we grow old ! ’ 

“ ‘ Malvina d’Aldrigger is quite twenty years old, my dear 
fellow. Old d’Aldrigger was married in 1800. He gave 
some rather fine entertainments in Strasbourg at the time of 
his wedding, and afterward when Malvina was born. That 
was in 1801 at the peace of Amiens, and here are we in the 
year 1823, Daddy Werbrust ! In those days everything was 
Ossianized ; he called his daughter Malvina. Six years after- 
ward there was a rage for chivalry, “ Partant pour la Syrie ” — 
a pack of nonsense — and he christened his second daughtei 
* See “ C6sar Birotteau.” 


THE FIRM OF NUCINGEN. 


327 


Isaure. She is seventeen. So there are two daughters to 
marry. * 

44 ‘ The women will not have a penny left in ten years* 
time,* said Werbrust, speaking to Desroches in a confidential 
tone. 

“ 4 There is d’Aldrigger’s manservant, the old fellow bel- 
lowing away at the back of the church ; he has been with 
them since the two young ladies were children, and he is 
capable of anything to keep enough together for them to live 
upon,* said Taillefer. 

44 ‘Dies tree/ ’* (from the minor canons.) ‘Dies ilia l * (from 
the choristers.) 

“ 4 Good-day, Werbrust * (from Taillefer), 4 the Dies ira 
puts me too much in mind of my poor boy.* 

t( 4 I shall go too ; it is too damp in here,* said Werbrust. 

“ ‘In favilla .* 

4 4 4 A few centimes, kind gentlemen ! * (from the beggars 
at the door.) 

44 4 For the expenses of the church 1 * (from the beadle, with 
a rattling clatter of the money-box.) 

“‘Amen 1 (from the choristers.) 

“ 4 What did he die of?* (from a friend.) 

44 4 He broke a bloodvessel in the heel * (from an inquisi- 
tive wag.) 

44 4 Who is dead ? * (from a passer-by.) 

44 4 The President de Montesquieu ! * (from a relative.) 

44 The sacristan to the poor, 4 Get away, all of you ; the 
money for you has been given to us; don*t ask for any 
more.’ ** 

44 Done to the life 1 ** cried Couture. And indeed it seemed 
to us that we heard all that went on in the church. Bixiou 
imitated everything, even the shuffling sound of the feet of 
the men that carried the coffin over the stone floor. 

44 There are poets and romancers and writers that say many 
* Day of Wrath : An antiphonal funeral hymn. 


328 


THE FIRM OF NUCINGEN. 


fine things about Parisian manners,” continued Bixiou, “but 
that is what really happens at a funeral. Ninety-nine out of 
a hundred that come to pay their respects to some poor devil 
departed get together and talk business or pleasure in the 
middle of the church.* To see some poor little touch of real 
sorrow, you need an impossible combination of circumstances. 
And, after all, is there such a thing as grief without a thought 
of self in it? ” 

“Ugh!” said Blondet. “Nothing is less respected than 
death ; is it that there is nothing less respectable? ” 

“ It is so common ! ” resumed Bixiou. “ When the service 
was over, Nucingen and du Tillet went to the graveside. The 
old manservant walked; Nucingen and du Tibet were put at 
the head of the procession of mourning coaches. ‘ Goot, mein 
goot friend/ said Nucingen as they turned into the boulevard. 
‘ It ees a goot time to marry Malfina ; you vill be der bro- 
dector off dat boor family vat ees in tears ; you vill haf ein 
family, a home off your own ; you vill haf a house ready vur- 
nished, und Malfina is truly ein dreashure.* ” 

“I seem to hear that old Robert Macaire of a Nucingen 
himself,” said Finot. 

“ ‘ A charming girl/ said Ferdinand du Tibet in a cool, un- 
enthusiastic tone,” Bixiou continued. 

“Just du Tibet himself summed up in a word!” cried 
Couture. 

“ ‘ Those that do not know her may think her plain/ pur- 
sued du Tibet, ‘but she has character, I admit.’ 

“ ‘ Und ein herz, dot is the pest of die pizness, mein dear 
poy; she vould make you an indelligent und defoted vife. 
In our beastly pizness, nopody cares to know who lifs or dies; 
it is a crate plessing gif a mann kann put drust in his vife’s 
heart. Mein Telvine prought me more as a million, as you 

*It may be noted that the city churches are without permanent seats; 
chairs are in readiness at the portals and are carried by the attendants to 
the position desired. 


THE FIRM OF NUCINGEN. 


329 


know, but I should gladly gif her for Malfina dot haf not so 
pig a dot' 

“ ‘ But how much has she ? * 

“ * I do not know precisely ; boot she haf soundings.* 

“ ‘ Yes, she has a mother with a great liking for rose-color,* 
said du Tillet ; and with that epigram he cut Nucingen’s diplo- 
matic efforts short. 

“After dinner the Baron de Nucingen informed Wilhel- 
mine Adolphus that she had barely four hundred thousand 
francs deposited with him. The daughter of Adolphus of 
Mannheim, thus reduced to an income of twenty-four thou- 
sand livres, lost herself in arithmetical exercises that muddled 
her wits. 

“ ‘ I have always had six thousand francs for our dress allow- 
ance,’ she said to Malvina. ‘Why, how did your father find 
money? We shall have nothing now with twenty-four thou- 
sand francs ; it is destitution ! Oh ! if my father could see 
me so come down in the world, it would kill him if he were 
not dead already ! Poor Wilhelmine ! ’ and she began to 
cry. 

“ Malvina, puzzled to know how to comfort her mother, 
represented to her that she was still young and pretty, that 
rose-color still became her, that she could continue to go to 
the opera and the Bouffons, where Mme. de Nucingen had a 
box. And so with visions of gayeties, dances, music, pretty 
dresses, and social success, the baroness was lulled to sleep 
and pleasant dreams in the blue, silk-curtained bed in the 
charming room next to the chamber in which Jean-Baptiste, 
Baron d’Aldrigger, had breathed his last but two nights ago. 

“ Here in a few words is the baron’s history. During his 
lifetime that worthy Alsacian accumulated about three 
millions of francs. In 1800, at the age of thirty-six, in the 
apogee of a fortune made during the Revolution, he made a 
marriage partly of ambition, partly of inclination, with the 
heiress of the family of Adolphus of Mannheim. Wilhel- 


330 


THE FIRM OF NUCINGEN. 


mine, being the idol of her whole family, naturally inherited 
their wealth after some ten years. Next, d’ Aldrigger’s fortune 
being doubled, he was transformed into a baron by his 
majesty, Emperor and King, and forthwith became a fanatical 
admirer of the great man to whom he owed his title. Where- 
fore, between 1814 and 1815 he ruined himself by a too 
serious belief in the sun of Austerlitz. Honest Alsacian as 
he was, he did not suspend payment, nor did he give his 
creditors shares in doubtful concerns by way of settlement. 
He paid everything over the counter, and then retired from 
business, thoroughly deserving Nucingen’s comment on his 
behavior — ‘Honest but stoobid.’ 

“All claims satisfied, there remained to him five hundred 
thousand francs and certain receipts for sums advanced to that 
Imperial Government, which had ceased to exist. ‘ See vat 
komms of too much pelief in Nappolion,’ said he, when he 
had realized all his capital. 

“When you have been one of the leading men in a place, 
how are you to remain in it when your estate has dwindled? 
D’Aldrigger, like all ruined provincials, removed to Paris, 
there intrepidly wore the tricolor braces embroidered with 
Imperial eagles, and lived entirely in Bonapartist circles. His 
capital he handed over to Nucingen, who gave him eight per 
cent, upon it, and took over the loans to the Imperial Gov- 
ernment at a mere sixty per cent, of reduction ; wherefore 
d’Aldrigger squeezed Nucingen’s hand and said, * I knew dot 
in you I should find de heart of ein Elzacien. (Nucingen 
was paid in full through our friend des Lupeaulx.) Well 
fleeced as d’Aldrigger had been, he still possessed an in- 
come of forty-four thousand francs ; but his mortification was 
further complicated by the spleen which lies in wait for the 
business man so soon as he retires from business. He set 
himself, noble heart, to sacrifice himself to his wife, now that 
her fortune was lost, that fortune of which she had allowed 
herself to be despoiled so easily, after the manner of a girl 


THE FIRM OF NUCINGEN. 


331 


entirely ignorant of money matters. Mme. d’Aldrigger ac- 
cordingly missed not a single pleasure to which she had been 
accustomed ; any void caused by the loss of Strasbourg ac- 
quaintances was speedily filled, and more than filled, with 
Paris gayeties. Even then, as now, the Nucingens lived at 
the higher end of financial society, and the Baron de Nucingen 
made it a point of honor to treat the honest banker well. His 
disinterested virtue looked well in the Nucingen salon. 

“ Every winter dipped into d’Aldrigger’s principal, but he 
did not venture to remonstrate with his pearl of a Wilhelmine. 
His was the most ingenuous unintelligent tenderness in the 
w F orld. A good man, but a stupid one ! ‘ What will become 

of them when I am gone ? ’ he said, as he lay dying ; and when 
he was left alone for a moment with Wirth, his old manservant, 
he struggled for breath to bid him take care of his mistress and 
her two daughters, as if the one reasonable being in the house 
were this Alsacian Caleb Balderstone. 

*•' Three years afterward, in 1826, Isaure was twenty years 
old, and Malvina still unmarried. Malvina had gone into 
society, and in course of time discovered for herself how super- 
ficial their friendships were, how accurately every one was 
weighed and appraised. Like most girls that have been ‘well 
brought up,’ as we say, Malvina had no idea of the mechanism 
of life, of the importance of money, of the difficulty of 
obtaining it, of the prices of things. And so, for six years, 
every lesson that she had learned had been a painful one 
for her. 

“ D’Aldrigger’s four hundred thousand francs were carried 
to the credit of the baroness’ account with the firm of Nu- 
cingen (she was her husband’s creditor for twelve hundred 
thousand francs under her marriage-settlement), and when in 
any difficulty the Shepherdess of the Alps dipped into her 
capital as though it were inexhaustible. 

“ When our pigeon first advanced toward his dove, Nucin- 
gen, knowing the baroness’ character, must have spoken 

V 


332 


THE FIRM OF NUCINGEN. 


plainly to Malvina on the financial position. At that time 
three hundred thousand francs were left ; the income of 
twenty-four thousand francs was reduced to eighteen thou- 
sand. Wirth had kept up this state of things for three years ! 
After that confidential interview, Malvina put down the car- 
riage, sold the horses, and dismissed the coachman, without 
her mother’s knowledge. The furniture, now ten years old, 
could not be renewed, but it all faded together, and for those 
that like harmony the effect was not half bad. The baroness 
herself, that so well-preserved flower, began to look like the 
last solitary frost-touched rose on a November bush. I myself 
watched the slow decline of luxury by quarter-tones and semi- 
tones ! Frightful, upon my honor ! It was my last trouble 
of the kind ; afterward I said to myself, 4 It is silly to care so 
much about other people.’ But while I was in the civil ser- 
vice, I was fool enough to take a personal interest in the 
houses where I dined ; I used to stand up for them ; I would 
say no ill of them myself ; I — oh ! I was a child. 

“ Well, when the erstwhile pearl’s daughter put the state 
of the case before her, ‘ Oh, my poor children,’ cried she, 
1 who will make my dresses now? I cannot afford new bon- 
nets; I cannot see visitors here nor go out.’ Now by what 
token do you know that a man is in love?” said Bixiou, 
interrupting himself. “ The question is, whether Beaudenord 
was genuinely in love with the fair-haired girl.” 

“He neglects his interests,” said Couture. 

“ He changes his shirt three times a day,” from Finot. 

“ There is another question to settle first,” opined Blondet; 
“a man of more than ordinary ability, can he, and ought he, 
to fall in love ? ” 

“My friends,” resumed Bixiou, with a sentimental air, 
“ there is a kind of man who, when he feels that he is in peril 
of falling in love, will snap his fingers or fling away his cigar 
(as the case may be) with a * Pooh ! there are other women in 
the world.’ Beware of that man for a dangerous reptile. 


THE FIRM OF NUCINGEN. 


333 


Still, the Government may employ that citizen somewhere in 
the foreign office. Blondet, I call your attention to the fact 
that this Godefroid had thrown up diplomacy." 

“ Well, he was absorbed," said Blondet. “ Love gives the 
fool his one chance of growing great." 

“Blondet, Blondet, how is it that we are so poor?" cried 
Bixiou. 

“And why is Finot so rich?" returned Blondet. “I will 
tell you how it is ; there, my son, we understand each other. 
Come, here is Finot filling up my glass as if I had carried in 
his firewood. At the end of dinner one ought to sip one’s 
wine slowly. Well ? " 

“Thou hast said. The absorbed Godefroid became fully 
acquainted with the family — the tall Malvina, the frivolous 
baroness, and the little lady of the dance. He became a 
servant after the most conscientious and restricted fashion. 
He was not scared away by the cadaverous remains of opu- 
lence ; not he I by degrees he became accustomed to the 
threadbare condition of things. It never struck the young 
man that the green silk damask and white ornaments in the 
drawing-room were shabby, spotted, and old-fashioned, and 
that the room needed refurnishing. The curtains, the tea- 
table, the knick-knacks on the chimney-piece, the rococo 
chandelier, the Eastern carpet with the pile worn down to the 
thread, the pianoforte, the little flowered china cups, the 
fringed serviettes so full of holes that they looked like open 
work in the Spanish fashion, the green sitting-room with the 
baroness* blue bedroom beyond it — it was all sacred, all 
dear to him. It is only your stupid woman with the brilliant 
beauty that throws heart, brain, and soul into the shade, who 
can inspire forgetfulness like this; a clever woman never 
abuses her advantages ; she must be small-natured and silly 
to gain such a hold upon a man. Beaudenord actually loved 
the solemn old Wirth — he has told me so himself! 

“ That old rogue regarded his future master with the awe 


834 


THE FIRM OF NUCINGEN’. 


which a good Catholic feels for the eucharist. Honest Wirth 
was a kind of Gaspard, a beer-drinking German sheathing his 
cunning in good-nature, much as a cardinal in the Middle 
Ages kept his dagger up his sleeve. Wirth saw a husband for 
Isaure, and accordingly proceeded to surround Godefroid with 
the mazy circumlocutions of his Alsacian geniality, that most 
adhesive of all known varieties of bird-lime. 

“ Mme. d’Aldrigger was radically ‘ improper.’ She thought 
love the most natural thing imaginable. When Isaure and 
Malvina went out together to the Champs Elysees or the 
Tuileries, where they were sure to meet the young men of their 
set, she would simply say, ‘A pleasant time to you, dear girls.’ 
Their friends among men, the only persons who might have 
slandered the sisters, championed them ; for the extraordinary 
liberty permitted in the d’Aldriggers’ salon made it unique 
in Paris. Vast wealth would scarcely have procured such 
evenings, the talk was good on any subject ; dress was not in- 
sisted upon ; you felt so much at home there that you could 
ask for supper. The sisters corresponded as they pleased, and 
quietly read their letters by their mother’s side ; it never oc- 
curred to the baroness to interfere in any way ; the adorable 
woman gave the girls the full benefits of her selfishness, and in 
a certain sense selfish persons are the easiest to live with ; they 
hate trouble, and therefore do not trouble other people ; they 
never beset the lives of their fellow-creatures with thorny 
advice and captious fault-finding ; nor do they torment you 
with the waspish solicitude of excessive affection that must 

know all things and rule all things ” 

“ This comes home,” said Blondet, “but, my dear fellow, 

this is not telling a story, this is blague (fudge) ” 

“ Blondet, if you were not tipsy, I should really feel hurt ! 
He is the one serious literary character among us ; for his 
benefit, I honor you by treating you like men of taste, I am 
distilling my tale for you, and now he criticises me ! There 
is no greater proof of intellectual sterility, my friends, than 


THE FIRM OF NUCINGEN. 


335 


the piling up of facts. ‘Le Misanthrope/ that supreme 
comedy, shows us that art consists in the power of building a 
palace on a needle’s point. The gist of my idea is in the fairy 
wand which can turn the Desert into an Interlaken in ten 
seconds (precisely the time required to empty this glass). 
Would you rather that I fired a story off at you like a cannon : 
ball, or a commander-in-chief’s report ? We chat and laugh ; 
and this journalist, a bibliophobe when sober, expects me, for- 
sooth, when he is drunk, to teach my tongue to move at the 
dull jog-trot of a printed book.” (Here he affected to weep.) 
“ Woe unto the French imagination when men fain would 
blunt the needle-points of her pleasant humor! Dies irce ! 
Let us weep for Candide. Long live the ‘ Kritik of Pure 
Reason/ 4 La Symbolique/ and the systems in five closely 
packed volumes, printed by Germans, who little suspect that 
the gist of the matter has been known in Paris since 1750, and 
crystallized in a few trenchant words — the diamonds of our 
national thought. Blondet is driving a hearse to his own 
suicide ; Blondet, forsooth ! who manufactures newspaper ac- 
counts of the last words of all the great men that die without 
saying anything ! ” 

“Come, get on,” put in Finot. 

“ It was my intention to explain to you in what the happiness 
of a man consists when he is not a shareholder (out of compli- 
ment to Couture). Well, now, do you not see at what a price 
Godefroid secured the greatest happiness of a young man’s 
dream ? He was trying to understand Isaure, by way of 
making sure that she should understand him. Things which 
comprehend one another must needs be similar. Infinity and 
Nothingness, for instance, are like; everything that lies be- 
tween the two is like neither. Nothingness is stupidity; 
genius, Infinity. The lovers wrote each other the stupidest 
letters imaginable, putting down various expressions then in 
fashion upon bits of scented paper: ‘Angel! ^Eoliamharp ! 
with thee I shall be complete ! There is a heart in my man’s 


336 


THE FIRM OF NUCINGEN’. 


breast ! Weak woman, poor me ! * all the latest heart-frippery. 
It was Godefroid’s wont to stay in a drawing-room for a bare 
ten minutes ; he talked without any pretension to the women 
in it, and at those times they thought him very clever. In 
short, judge of his absorption ; Joby, his horses and carriages, 
became secondary interests in his life. He was never happy 
except in the depths of a snug settee opposite the baroness, 
by the dark-green porphyry chimney-piece, watching Isaure, 
taking tea, and chatting with the little circle of friends that 
dropped in every evening between eleven and twelve in the 
Rue Joubert. You could play bouillotte there safely. (I 
always won.) Isaure sat with one little foot thrust out in its 
black satin shoe ; Godefroid would gaze and gaze, and stay 
till every one else was gone, then say, * Give me your shoe ! 9 
and Isaure would put her little foot on a chair and take it off 
and give it to him, with a glance, one of those glances that — 
in short, you understand. 

“At length Godefroid discovered a great mystery in Mal- 
vina. Whenever du Tillet knocked at the door, the live red 
that colored Malvina’s face said 1 Ferdinand 1 ’ When the 
poor girl’s eyes fell on that two-footed tiger, they lighted up 
like a brasier fanned by a current of air. When Ferdinand 
drew her away to the window or a side-table, she betrayed 
her secret infinite joy. It is a rare and beautiful thing to see 
a woman so much in love that she loses her cunning to be 
strange, and you can read her heart ; as rare (dear me !) in 
Paris as the Singing Flower in the Indies. But in spite of a 
friendship dating from the d’Aldriggers’ first appearance at 
the Nucingens’, Ferdinand did not marry Malvina. Our 
ferocious friend was not apparently jealous of Desroches, who 
paid assiduous court to the young lady ; Desroches wanted to 
pay off the rest of the purchase-money due for his connection ; 
Malvina could not well have less than fifty thousand crowns, 
he thought, and so the lawyer was fain to play the lover. 
Malvina, deeply humiliated as she was by du Tibet’s careless* 




» 






I 




L 


















































* 


























* 









ISAURE WOULD PUT HER LITTLE FOOT ON A CHAIR. 






























* 







THE FIRM OF NUC/NGEJI. 


337 

ness, loved him too well to shut the door upon him. With 
her, an enthusiastic, highly wrought, sensitive girl, love some- 
times got the better of pride, and pride again overcame 
wounded love. Our friend Ferdinand, cool and self-possessed, 
accepted her tenderness, and breathed the atmosphere with 
the quiet enjoyment of a tiger licking the blood that dyes his 
throat. He would come to make sure of it with new proofs ; 
he never allowed two days to pass without a visit to the Rue 
Joubert. 

“At that time the rascal possessed something like eighteen 
hundred thousand francs; money must have weighed very 
little with him in the question of marriage ; and he had not 
merely been proof against Malvina, he had resisted the Barons 
de Nucingen and de Rastignac ; though both of them had set 
him galloping at the rate or seventy-five leagues a day, with 
outriders, regardless of expense, through mazes of their cun- 
ning devices — and with never a clue of thread. 

“ Godefroid could not refrain from saying a word to his 
future sister-in-law as to her ridiculous position between a 
banker and an attorney. 

“ ‘ You mean to read me a lecture on the subject of Ferdi- 
nand,’ she said frankly, * to know the secret between us. 
Dear Godefroid, never mention this again. Ferdinand’s birth, 
antecedents, and fortune count for nothing in this, so you may 
think it is something extraordinary.’ A few days afterward, 
however, Malvina took Godefroid apart to say, ‘I do not 
think that Desroches is sincere ’ (such is the instinct of love); 
* he would like to marry me, and he is paying court to some 
tradesman’s daughter as well. I should very much like to 
know whether I am a second shift, and whether marriage is a 
matter of money with him.’ The fact was that Desroches, 
deep as he was, could not make out du Tillet, and was afraid 
that he might marry Malvina. So the fellow had secured his 
retreat. His position was intolerable, he was scarcely paying 
ins expenses and interest on the debt. Women understand 
22 


338 


THE FIRM OF NUC1NGEN. 


nothing of these things ; for them, love is always a million- 
aire.” 

“But since neither du Tillet nor Desroches married her, 
just explain Ferdinand’s motive,” said Finot. 

“ Motive ? ” repeated Bixiou ; “ why, this. General Rule : 
A. girl that has once given away her slipper, even if she refused 
it for ten years, is never married by the man who ” 

“Bosh!” interrupted Blondet, “one reason for loving is 
the fact that one has loved. His motive? Here it is. 
General Rule : Do not marry as a sergeant when some day 
you may be Duke of Dantzig and Marshal of France. Now, 
see what a match du Tillet has made since then. He married 
one of the Comte de Granville’s daughters, into one of the 
oldest families in the French magistracy.” 

“Desroches’ mother had a friend, a druggist’s wife,” con- 
tinued Bixiou. “ Said druggist had retired with a fat fortune. 
These druggist folk have absurdly crude notions ; by way of 
giving his daughter a good education, he had sent her to a 
boarding-school ! Well, Matifat meant the girl to marry well, 
on the strength of two hundred thousand francs, good hard 
coin with no scent of drugs about it.” 

“ Florine’s Matifat?” asked Blondet. 

“Well, yes. Lousteau’s Matifat; ours, in fact. The 
Matifats, even then lost to us, had gone to live in the Rue du 
Cherche-Midi, as far as may be from the Rue des Lombards, 
where their money was made. For my own part, I had culti- 
vated those Matifats. While I served my time in the galleys 
of the law, when I was cooped up for eight hours out of the 
twenty-four with nincompoops of the first water, I saw queer 
characters enough to convince myself that all is not dead- 
level even in obscure places, and that in the flattest inanity 
you may chance upon an angle. Yes, dear boy, such and 
such a philistine is to such another as Rafael is to Natoire. 

“ Madame Desroches, the widowed mother, had long ago 
planned this marriage for her son, in spite of a tremendous 


THE FIRM OF NUCINGEH. 


339 


obstacle which took the shape of one Cochin, Matifat’s 
partner’s son, a young clerk in the audit department. M. 
and Mme. Matifat were of the opinion that an attorney’s 
position ‘gave some guarantee for a wife’s happiness,’ to use 
their own expression ; and as for Desroches, he was prepared to 
fall in with his mother’s views in case he could do no better 
for himself. Wherefore, he kept up his acquaintance with the 
druggists in the Rue du Cherche-Midi. 

“To put another kind of happiness before you, you should 
have a description of these storekeepers, male and female. 
They rejoiced in the possession of a handsome first-floor and 
a strip of garden ; for amusement, they watched a little squirt 
of water, no bigger than a wheat-stalk, perpetually rising and 
falling upon a small, round freestone slab in the middle of a 
basin some six feet across ; they would rise early of a morning 
to see if the plants in the garden had grown in the night; 
they had nothing to do, they were restless, they dressed for 
the sake of dressing, bored themselves at the theatre, and 
were for ever going to and fro between Paris and Luzarches, 
where they had a country house. I have dined there. 

“ Once they tried to quiz me, Blondet. I told them a 
long-winded story that lasted from nine o’clock till midnight, 
one tale inside another. I had just brought my twenty-ninth 
personage upon the scene (the newspapers have plagiarized 
with their * continued in our next ’), when old Matifat, who 
as host still held out, snored like the rest, after blinking for 
five minutes. Next day they all complimented me upon the 
ending of my tale ! 

“ These tradespeople’s society consisted of M. and Mme. 
Cochin, Mme. Desroches, and a young Popinot, still in the 
drug business, who used to bring them news of the Rue des 
Lombards. (You know him, Finot.) Mme. Matifat loved 
the arts ; she bought lithographs, chromo-lithographs, and 
colored prints— all the cheapest things she could lay her hands 
on. The Sieur Matifat amused himself by looking into new 


340 


THE FIRM OF NUCINGEN. 


business speculations, investing a little capital now and again 
for the sake of the excitement. Florine had cured him of his 
taste for the Regency style of thing. One saying of his will 
give you some idea of the depths in my Matifat. ‘ Art thou 
going to bed, my nieces ? ’ he used to say when he wished 
them good-night, because (as he explained) he was afraid of 
hurting their feelings with the more formal ‘ you.’ 

“ The daughter was a girl with no manner at all. She 
looked rather like a superior sort of housemaid. She could 
get through a sonata, she wrote a pretty English hand, knew 
French grammar and orthography — a complete commercial 
education, in short. She was impatient enough to be married 
and leave the paternal roof, finding it as dull at home as a 
lieutenant finds the night-watch at sea ; at the same time, it 
should be said that her watch lasted through the whole twenty- 
four hours. Desroches or Cochin junior, a notary or a life- 
guardsman, or a sham English lord — any husband would have 
suited her. As she so obviously knew nothing of life, I took 
pity upon her, I determined to reveal the great secret of it. 
But, pooh ! the Matifats shut their doors on me. The bour- 
geois and I shall never understand each other.” 

“ She married General Gouraud,” said Finot. 

“ In forty-eight hours, Godefroid de Beaudenord, late of 
the diplomatic corps, saw through the Matifats and their 
nefarious designs,” resumed Bixiou. “ Rastignac happened 
to be chatting with the frivolous baroness when Godefroid 
came in to give his report to Malvina. A word here and 
there reached his ear ; he guessed the matter on foot, more 
particularly from Malvina’s look of satisfaction that it was as 
she had suspected. Then Rastignac actually stopped on till 
two o’clock in the morning. And yet there are those that 
call him selfish ! Beaudenord took his departure when the 
baroness went to bed. 

“ As soon as Rastignac was left alone with Malvina, he 
spoke in a quiet, fatherly, good-humored fashion : ‘ Dear child, 


THE FIRM OF NUCINGEN. 


341 


please to bear in mind that a poor fellow, heavy with sleep, 
has been drinking tea to keep himself awake till two o’clock 
in the morning, all for a chance of saying a solemn word of 
advice to you — Marry! Do not be too particular; do not 
brood over your feelings ; never mind the sordid schemes of 
men that have one foot here and another in the Matifats’ 
house ; do not stop to think at all : Marry ! When a girl 
marries, it means that the man whom she marries undertakes 
to maintain her in a more or less good position in life, and at 
any rate her comfort is assured. I know the world. Girls, 
mammas, and grandmammas are all of them hypocrites when 
they fly off into sentiment over a question of marriage. No- 
body really thinks of anything but a good position. If a 
mother marries her daughter well, she says that she has made 
an excellent bargain.’ Here Rastignac unfolded his theory of 
marriage, which to his way of thinking is a business arrange- 
ment, with a view to making life tolerable ; and ended up 
with, ‘ I do not ask to know your secret, Malvina ; I know 
it already. Men talk things over among themselves, just as 
you women talk after you leave the dinner-table. This is all 
I have to say: Marry. If you do not, remember that I begged 
you to marry, here, in this room, this evening ! ’ 

“There was a certain ring in Rastignac’s voice which com- 
pelled, not attention, but reflection. There was something 
startling in his insistence; something that went, as Rastignac 
meant that it should, to the quick of Malvina’s intelligence. 
She thought over the counsel again next day, and vainly asked 
herself why it had been given.” 

Couture broke in. “ In all these tops that you have set 
spinning, I see nothing at all like the beginnings of Rastig- 
nac’s fortune,” said he. “ You apparently take us for Matifats 
multiplied by half-a-dozen bottles of champagne.” 

“ We are just coming to it,” returned Bixiou. “ You have 
followed the course of all the rivulets which make up that forty 
thousand livres a year which so many people envy. By this 


342 


THE FIRM OF NUCINGEN. 


time Rastignac held the threads of all these lives in his 
hand.” 

“ Desroches, the Matifats, Beaudenord, the d’Aldriggers 
and d’Aiglemont ? ” 

“Yes, and a hundred others,” assented Bixiou. 

“ Come now, how? ” cried Finot. “ I know a few things, 
but I cannot see a glimpse of an answer to this riddle.” 

“ Blondet has roughly given you the account of Nucingen’s 
first two suspensions of payment; now for the third, with full 
details. After the peace of 1815, Nucingen grasped an idea 
which some of us only fully understood later, to wit, that 
capital is a power only when you are very much richer than 
other people. In his own mind, he was jealous of the Roths- 
childs. He had five millions of francs, he wanted ten. He 
knew a way to make thirty millions with ten, while w r ith five 
he could only make fifteen. So he made up his mind to 
operate a third suspension of payment. About that time, the 
great man hit on the idea of indemnifying his creditors with 
paper of purely fictitious value and keeping their coin. On 
the market, a great idea of this sort is not expressed in pre- 
cisely this cut-and-dried way. Such an arrangement consists 
in giving a lot of grown-up children a small pie in exchange 
for a gold-piece ; and, like children of a smaller growth, they 
prefer the pie to the gold-piece, not suspecting that they might 
have a couple of hundred pies for it.” 

“What is all this about, Bixiou?” cried Couture. “Noth- 
ing more bond fide. Not a week passes but pies are offered to 
the public for a louis. But who compels the public to take 
them? Are they not perfectly free to make inquiries?” 

“You would rather have it made compulsory to take up 
shares, would you?” asked Blondet. 

“No,” said Finot. “Where would the talent come in?” 

“ Very good for Finot.” 

“ Who put him up to it?” asked Couture. 

“The fact was,” continued Bixiou, “that Nucingen had 


THE FIRM OF NUC INGEN. 


343 


twice had the luck to present the public (quite unintentionally) 
with a pie that turned out to be worth more than the money 
he received for it. That unlucky good-luck gave him qualms 
of conscience. A course of such luck is fatal to a man in the 
long run. This time he meant to make no mistake of this 
sort ; he waited ten years for an opportunity of issuing nego- 
tiable securities which should seem on the face of it to be 
worth something, while as a matter of fact ” 

“ But if you look at banking in that light,” broke in Cou- 
ture, “no sort of business would be possible. More than one 
bond fide banker, backed up by a bond fide government, has 
induced the hardest-headed men on ’Change to take up stock 
which was bound to fall within a given time. You have seen 
better than that. Have you not seen stock created with the 
concurrence of a government to pay the interest upon older 
stock, so as to keep things going and tide over the difficulty? 
These operations were more or less like Nucingen’s settle- 
ments. ’ ’ 

“ The thing may look queer on a small scale,” said Blondet, 
“but on a large we call it finance. There are high-handed 
proceedings criminal between man and man that amount to 
nothing when spread out over any number of men, much as a 
drop of prussic acid becomes harmless in a pail of water. You 
take a man’s life, you are guillotined. But if, for any polit- 
ical conviction whatsoever, you take five hundred lives, po- 
litical crimes are respected. You take five thousand francs 
% out of my desk ; to the hulks you go. But with a sop cleverly 
pushed into the jaws of a thousand speculators, you can cram 
the stock of any bankrupt republic or monarchy down their 
throats ; even if the loan has been floated, as Couture says, to 
pay the interest on that very same national debt. Nobody 
can complain. These are the real principles of the present 
Golden Age.” 

“ When the stage machinery is so huge,” continued Bixiou, 
“a good many puppets are required. In the first place. 


344 


THE FIRM OF NUCINGEN. 


Nucingen had purposely and with his eyes'open invested his 
five millions in an American investment, foreseeing that the 
profits would not come in until it was too late. The firm 
of Nucingen deliberately emptied its coffers. Any liquidation 
ought to be brought about naturally. In deposits belonging 
to private individuals and other investments, the firm pos- 
sessed about six millions of capital altogether. Among those 
private individuals were the Baroness d’Aldrigger with her 
three hundred thousand francs, Beaudenord with four hundred 
thousand, d’Aiglemont with a million, Matifat with three 
hundred thousand, Charles Grandet (who married Mile. 
d’Aubrion) with half a million, and so forth, and so forth. 

“Now, if Nucingen had himself brought out a joint-stock 
company, with the shares of which he proposed to indemnify 
his creditors after more or less ingenious manoeuvring, he 
might perhaps have been suspected. He set about it more 
cunningly than that. He made some one else put up the 
machinery that was to play the part of the Mississippi scheme 
in Law’s system. Nucingen can make the longest-headed 
men work out his schemes for him without confiding a word 
to them ; it is his peculiar talent. Nucingen just let fall a 
hint to du Tillet of the pyramidal, triumphant notion of bring- 
ing out a joint-stock enterprise with capital sufficient to pay 
very high dividends for a time. Tried for the first time, in 
days when noodles with capital were plentiful, the plan was 
pretty sure to end in a run upon the shares, and consequently 
in a profit for the banker that issued them. You must re- 
member that this happened in 1826. 

“ Du Tibet, struck though he was by an idea both pregnant 
and ingenious, naturally bethought himself that if the enter- 
prise failed, the blame must fab upon somebody. For which 
reason, it occurred to him to put forward a figurehead director 
in charge of his commercial machinery. At this day you all 
must know the secret of the firm of Claparon and Company, 
founded by du Tibet, one of the finest inventions ” 


THE FIRM OF NUCINGEN. 


345 


“Yes,” said Blondet, “the responsible editor in business 
matters, the instigator, and scapegoat ; but we know better than 
that nowadays. We put, ‘ Apply at the offices of the Com- 
pany, such-and-such a number, such-and-such a street,’ where 
the public finds a staff of clerks in green caps, about as pleas- 
ing to behold as broker’s men.” 

“Nucingen,” pursued Bixiou, “ had supported the firm of 
Charles Claparon and Company with all his credit. There 
were markets in which you mighty safely put a million francs’ 
worth of Claparon’s paper. So du Tillet proposed to bring 
his firm of Claparon to the fore. So said, so done. In 
1825 the shareholder was still an unsophisticated being. 
There was no such thing as cash lying at call. Managing 
directors did not pledge themselves not to put their own shares 
upon the market \ they kept no deposit with the Bank of 
France ; they guaranteed nothing. They did not even conde- 
scend to explain to shareholders the exact limits of their 
liabilities when they informed them that the directors, in their 
goodness, refrained from asking any more than a thousand, or 
five hundred, or even two hundred and fifty francs. It was 
not given out that the experiment in cere publico was not meant 
to last for more than seven, five, or even three years, so that 
shareholders would not have long to wait for the catastrophe. 
It was in the childhood of the art. Promoters did not even 
publish the gigantic prospectuses with which they stimulate 
the imagination, and at the same time make demands for 
money of all and sundry.” 

“ That only comes when nobody wishes to part with 
money,” said Couture. 

“ In short, there was no competition in investments,” con- 
tinued Bixiou. “ Papier-mache manufacturers, cotton printers, 
zinc-rollers, theatres, and newspapers as yet did not hurl them- 
selves like hunting dogs upon their quarry — the expiring share- 
holder. ‘Nice things in shares,’ as Couture says, put thus 
artlessly before the public, and backed up by the opinions of 


346 


THE FIRM OF NUCINGEN. 


experts (‘ the princes of science ’), were negotiated shame- 
facedly in the silence and shadow of the Bourse. Lynx-eyed 
speculators used to execute (financially speaking) the aria 
Calumny out of ‘The Barber of Seville.’ They went about 
piano, piano , making known the merits of the concern through 
the medium of stock-exchange gossip. They could only ex- 
ploit the victim in his own house, on the Bourse, or in com- 
pany ; so they reached him by means of the skillfully created 
rumor which grew till it reached a tutti of a quotation in four 
figures ” 

“And as we can say anything among ourselves,” said 
Couture, “I will go back to the last subject.” 

“ Vous £tes orfevre, Monsieur Josse ! ”* cried Finot. 

“ Finot will always be classic, constitutional, and pedantic,” 
commented Blondet. 

“Yes,” rejoined Couture, on whose account Cerizet had 
just been condemned on a criminal charge. “ I maintain 
that the new way is infinitely less fraudulent, less ruinous, 
more straightforward than the old. Publicity means time for 
reflection and inquiry. If here and there a shareholder is 
taken in, he has himself to blame, nobody sells him a pig in a 

poke. The manufacturing industry ” 

“Ah ! ” exclaimed Bixiou, “here comes industry ” 

“ — is a gainer by it,” continued Couture, taking no notice 
of the interruption. “ Every government that meddles with 
commerce and cannot leave it free, sets about an expensive 
piece of folly ; State interference ends in a maximum or a 
monopoly. To my thinking, few things can be more in con- 
formity with the principles of free trade than joint-stock com- 
panies. State interference means that you try to regulate the 
relations of principal and interest, which is absurd. In busi- 
ness, generally speaking, the profits are in proportion to the 
risks. What does it matter to the State how money is set cir- 
culating, provided that it is always in circulation? What 
* You are a goldsmith, Mister Joss. 


THE FIRM OF NUCINGEN. 


347 


does it matter who is rich or who is poor, provided that there 
is a constant quantity of rich people to be taxed ? Joint-stock 
companies, limited liability companies, every sort of enterprise 
that pays a dividend, has been carried on for twenty years in 
England, commercially the first country in the world. Noth- 
ing passes unchallenged there ; the Houses of Parliament 
hatch some twelve hundred laws every session, yet no mem- 
ber of Parliament has ever yet raised an objection to the 
system ” 

“A cure for plethora of the strong box. Purely vegetable 
remedy,” put in Bixiou, “ Its carottcs ” (gambling specula- 
tion). 

“Look here!” cried Couture, firing up at this. “You 
have ten thousand francs. You invest it in ten shares of a 
thousand francs each in ten different enterprises. You are 
swindled nine times out of the ten — as a matter of fact you are 
not, the public is a match for anybody, but say that you are 
swindled, and only one affair turns out well (by accident ! oh, 
granted ! it was not done on purpose — there, chaff away !). 
Very well, the punter that has the sense to divide up his 
stakes in this way hits on a splendid investment, like those did 
who took shares in the Worstchin mines. Gentlemen, let us 
admit among ourselves that those who call out are hypocrites, 
desperately vexed because they have no good ideas of their own, 
and neither power to advertise nor skill to exploit a business. 
You will not have long to wait for proof. In a very short time 
you will see the aristocracy, the Court, and public men descend 
into speculation in serried columns; you will see that their 
claws are longer, their morality more crooked than ours, while 
they have not our good points. What a head a man must 
have if he has to found a business in times when the share- 
holder is as covetous and keen as the inventor ! What a great 
magnetizer must he be that can create a Claparon and hit 
upon expedients never tried before. Do you know the moral 
of it all ? Our age is no better than we are; we live in an era 


348 


THE FIRM OF HUCINGEN. 


of greed ; no one troubles himself about the intrinsic value of 
a thing if he can only make a profit on it by selling it to some- 
body else ; so he passes it on to his neighbor. The share- 
holder that thinks he sees a chance of making money is just 
as covetous as the founder that offers him the opportunity of 
making it.” 

“Isn’t he fine, our Couture? Isn’t he fine?” exclaimed 
Bixiou, turning to Blondet. “ He will ask us next to erect 
statues to him as a benefactor of the species.” 

“It would certainly lead people to conclude that the fool’s 
money is the wise man’s patrimony by divine right,” said 
Blondet. 

“ Gentlemen,” cried Couture, “ let us have our laugh out 
here to make up for all the times when we must listen gravely 
to solemn nonsense justifying laws passed on the spur of the 
moment.” 

“He is right,” said Blondet. “What times we live in, 
gentlemen ! When the fire of intelligence appears among us, 
it is promptly quenched by haphazard legislation. Almost all 
our lawgivers come up from little parishes where they studied 
human nature through the medium of the newspapers ; forth- 
with they shut down the safety-valve, and when the machinery 
blows up there is weeping and gnashing of teeth ! We do 
nothing nowadays but pass penal laws and levy taxes. Will 
you have the sum of it all ? There is no religion left in the 
State ! ” 

“ Oh, bravo, Blondet ! ” cried Bixiou, “ thou hast set thy 
finger on the weak spot. Meddlesome taxation has lost us 
more victories here in France than the vexatious chances of 
war. I once spent seven years in the hulks of a government 
department, chained with bourgeois to my bench. There was 
a clerk in the office, a man with a head on his shoulders ; he 
had set his mind upon making a sweeping reform of the whole 
fiscal system — ah, well, we took the conceit out of him nicely. 
France might have been too prosperous, you know ; she might 


THE FIRM OF NUCINGEN. 


349 


have amused herself by conquering Europe again ; we acted in 
the interests of the peace of nations. I slew Rabourdin with 
a caricature.” * 

“ By religion I do not mean cant ; I use the word in its wide 
political sense,” rejoined Blondet. 

“ Explain your meaning,” said Finot. 

“ Here it is,” returned Blondet. “ There has been a good 
deal said about affairs at Lyons; about the Republic cannon- 
aded in the streets ; well, there was not a word of truth in it 
all. The Republic took up the riots, just as an insurgent 
snatches up a rifle. The truth is queer and profound, I can 
tell you. The Lyons trade is a soulless trade. They will not 
weave a yard of silk unless they have the order and are sure 
of payment. If orders fall off, the workmen may starve ; they 
can scarcely earn a living, convicts are better off. After the 
Revolution of July, the distress reached such a pitch that the 
Lyons weavers — the canuts , as they call them — hoisted the flag, 
‘ Bread or Death ! ’ a proclamation of a kind which compels 
the attention of a government. It was really brought about 
by the cost of living at Lyons ; Lyons must build theatres and 
become a metropolis, forsooth, and the octroif duties accord- 
ingly were insanely high. The Republicans got wind of this 
bread riot, they organized the canuts in two camps, and fought 
among themselves. Lyons had her Three Days, but order 
was restored, and the silk weavers went back to their dens. 
Hitherto the canut had been honest ; the silk for his work was 
weighed out to him in hanks, and he brought back the same 
weight of woven tissue ; now he made up his mind that the 
silk merchants were oppressing him ; he put honesty out at 
the door and rubbed oil on his fingers. He still brought 
back weight for weight, but he sold the silk represented by 
the oil ; and the French silk trade has suffered from a plague 
of ‘ greased silks,’ which might have ruined Lyons and a 
whole branch of French commerce. The masters and the 

f Dues collected at the city gates. 


* See “ The Workpeople.” 


350 


THE FIRM OF NUCINGEN. 


Government, instead of removing the causes of the evil, simply 
drove it in with a violent external application. They ought 
to have sent a clever man to Lyons, one of those men that are 
said to have no principle, an Abbe Terray ; but they looked 
at the affair from a military point of view. The result of the 
troubles is a gros de Naples at forty sous per yard ; the silk is 
sold at this day, I dare say, and the masters no doubt have 
hit upon some new check upon the men. This method of 
manufacturing without looking ahead ought never to have 
existed in the country where one of the greatest citizens that 
France has ever known ruined himself to keep six thousand 
weavers in work without orders. Richard Lenoir fed them, 
and the Government was thick-headed enough to allow him 
to suffer from the fall of the prices of textile fabrics brought 
about by the Revolution of 1814. Richard Lenoir is the one 
case of a merchant that deserves a statue. And yet the sub- 
scription set on foot for him has no subscribers, while the fund 
for General Foy’s children reached a million francs. Lyons 
has drawn her own conclusions ; she knows France, she knows 
that there is no religion left. The story of Richard Lenior is 
one of those blunders which Fouche condemned as worse than 
a crime.” 

“Suppose that there is a tinge of charlatanism in the way 
in which concerns are put before the public,” began Couture, 
returning to the charge, “that word charlatanism has come 
to be a damaging expression, a middle term, as it were, be- 
tween right and wrong ; for where, I ask you, does charla- 
tanism begin ? where does it end ? what is charlatanism ? do 
me the kindness of telling me what it is not. Now for a little 
plain speaking, the rarest social ingredient. A business which 
should consist in going out at night to look for goods to sell 
in the day would be obviously impossible. You find the in- 
stinct of forestalling the market in the very match-seller. 
How to forestall the market — that is the one idea of the so- 
called honest tradesman of the Rue Saint-Denis, as of the 


THE FIRM OF NUCINGEN. 


351 


most brazen-fronted speculator. If stocks are heavy, sell you 
must. If sales are slow, you must tickle your customer ; 
hence the signs of the Middle Ages, hence the modern pros- 
pectus. I do not see a hair’s-breadth of difference between 
attracting custom and forcing your goods upon the consumer. 
It may happen, it is sure to happen, it often happens, that a 
storekeeper gets hold of damaged goods, for the seller always 
cheats the buyer. Go and ask the most upright folk in Paris 
— the best-known men in business, that is — and they will all 
triumphantly tell you of dodges by which they passed off 
stock which they knew to be bad upon the public. The well- 
known firm of Minard began by sales of this kind. In the 
Rue Saint-Denis they sell nothing but ‘greased silk; ’ it is all 
that they can do. The most honest merchants tell you in the 
most candid way that ‘you must get out of a bad bargain as 
best you can ’ — a motto for the most unscrupulous rascality. 
Blondet has given you an account of the Lyons affair, its 
causes and effects, and I proceed in my turn to illustrate my 
theory with an anecdote : There was once a woolen weaver, 
an ambitious man, burdened with a large family of children 
by a wife too much beloved. He put too much faith in the 
Republic, laid in a stock of scarlet wool, and manufactured 
those red-knitted caps that you may have noticed on the 
heads of all the street urchins in Paris. How this came about 
I am just going to tell you. The Republic was beaten. After 
the Saint-Merri affair the caps were quite unsalable. Now, 
when a weaver finds that beside a wife and children he has 
some ten thousand red woolen caps in the house, and that no 
hatter will take a single one of them, notions begin to pass 
through his head as fast as if he were a banker racking his 
brains to get rid of ten million francs’ worth of shares in some 
dubious investment. As for this Law of the Faubourg, this 
Nucingen of caps, do you know what he did? He went to 
find a pothouse dandy, one of those comic men that drive 
police sergeants to despair at open-air dancing saloons at the 


352 


THE FIRM OF NUC INGEN. 


barriers ; him he engaged to play the part of an American 
captain staying at Meurice’s and buying for the export trade. 
He was to go to some large hatter, who still had a cap in his 
store-window, and ‘ inquire for ’ ten thousand red woolen 
caps. The hatter, scenting business in the wind, hurried 
round to the woolen weaver and rushed upon the stock. 
After that, no more of the American captain, you understand, 
and great plenty of caps. If you interfere with the freedom 
of trade, because free trade has its drawbacks, you might as 
well tie the hands of justice because a crime sometimes goes 
unpunished, or blame the bad organization of society because 
civilization produces some evils. From the caps and the Rue 
Saint-Denis to joint-stock companies and the bank — draw 
your own conclusions.” 

“ A crown for Couture ! ” said Blondet, twisting a serviette 
into a wreath for his head. “ I go further than that, gentle- 
men. If there is a defect in the working hypothesis, what is 
the cause ? The law ! the whole system of legislation. The 
blame rests with the legislature. The great men of their dis- 
tricts are sent up to us by the provinces, crammed with pa- 
rochial notions of right and wrong ; and ideas that are indis- 
pensable if you want to keep clear of collisions with justice, 
are stupid when they prevent a man from rising to the height 
at which a maker of laws ought to abide. Legislation may 
prohibit such and such developments of human passions — 
gambling, lotteries, the Ninons of the pavement, anything 
you please — but you cannot extirpate the passions themselves 
by any amount of legislation. Abolish them, you would 
abolish the society which develops them, even if it does not 
produce them. The gambling passion lurks, for instance, at 
the bottom of every heart, be it a girl’s heart, a provincial’s, 
a diplomatist’s ; everybody longs to have money without 
working for it ; you may hedge the desire about with restric- 
tions, but the gambling mania immediately breaks out in 
another form. You stupidly suppress lotteries, but the cook- 


THE FIRM OF NUCINGEN. 


353 


maid pilfers none the less, and puts her ill-gotten gains in the 
savings bank. She gambles with two hundred and fifty franc 
stakes instead of forty sous ; joint-stock companies and specu- 
lation take the place of the lottery; the gambling goes on 
without the green cloth, the croupier’s rake is invisible, the 
cheating planned beforehand. The gambling-houses are 
closed, the lottery has come to an end; ‘and now,’ cry 
idiots, ‘morals have greatly improved in France,’ as if, for- 
sooth, they had suppressed the punters. The gambling still 
goes on, only the State makes nothing from it now; and for 
a tax paid with pleasure, it has substituted a burdensome duty. 
Nor is the number of suicides reduced, for the gambler never 
dies, though his victim does. 

“ I am not speaking now of foreign capital lost to France,” 
continued Couture, “nor of the Frankfort lotteries. The 
Convention passed a decree of death against these who hawked 
foreign lottery-tickets, and procureur syndics used to traffic 
in them. So much for the sense of our legislator and his 
driveling philanthropy. The encouragement given to savings 
banks is a piece of crass political folly. Suppose that things 
take a doubtful turn and people lose confidence, the Govern- 
ment will find that they have instituted a queue for money, like 
the queues outside the bakers’ shops. So many savings banks, 
so many riots. Three streets boys hoist a flag in some corner 
or other, and you have a revolution ready made. 

“ But this danger, however great it may be, seems to me 
less to be dreaded than the widespread demoralization. 
Savings banks are a means of inoculating the people, the 
classes least restrained by education or by reason from 
schemes that are tacitly criminal with the vices bred of self- 
interest. See what comes of philanthropy ! 

“A great politician ought to be without a conscience in 
abstract questions, or he is a bad steersman for a nation. An 
honest politician is a steam-engine with feelings, a pilot that 
would make love at the helm and let the ship go down. A 
23 


354 


THE FIRM OF NUCINGEN. 


prime minister who helps himself to millions but makes 
France prosperous and great is preferable, is he not, to a public 
servant who ruins his country, even though he is buried at the 
public expense? Would you hesitate between a Richelieu, a 
Mazarin, or a Potemkin, each v/ith his hundreds of millions 
of francs, and a conscientious Robert Lindet* that could make 
nothing out of assignats (paper money) and national property, 
or one of the virtuous imbeciles who ruined Louis XVI.? 
Go on, Bixiou.” 

“ I will not go into the details of the speculation which we 
owe to Nucingen’s financial genius. It would be the more 
inexpedient because the concern is still in existence and shares 
are quoted on the Bourse. The scheme was so convincing, 
there was such life in an enterprise sanctioned by royal letters- 
patent, that, though the shares issued at a thousand francs fell 
to three hundred, they rose to seven, and will reach par yet, 
after weathering the stormy years ’27, ’30, and *32. The 
financial crisis of 1827 sent them down ; after the Revolution 
of July they fell flat ; but there is really something in the 
affair, Nucingen simply could not invent a bad speculation. 
In short, as several banks of the highest standing have been 
mixed up in the affair, it would be unparliamentary to go 
further into detail. The nominal capital amounted to ten 
millions; the real capital to seven. Three millions were 
allotted to the founders and bankers that brought it out. 
Everything was done with a view to sending up the shares 
two hundred francs during the first six months by the payment 
of a sham dividend. Twenty per cent, on ten millions ! 
Du Tillet’s interest in the concern amounted to five hundred 
thousand francs. In the stock-exchange slang of the day, 
this share of the spoils was a ‘sop in the pan.’ Nucingen, 
with his millions made by the aid of a lithographer’s stone 
and a handful of pink paper, proposed to himself to operate 
certain nice little shares carefully hoarded in his private office 
* Minister of Finance of the Republic. 


THE FIRM OF NUCINGEN. 


355 


till the time came for putting them on the market. The 
shareholder’s money floated the concern, and paid for splen- 
did business premises, so they began operations. And Nucin- 
gen held in reserve founders’ shares in heaven knows what 
coal and argentiferous lead-mines, also in a couple of canals; 
the shares had been given to him for bringing out the con- 
cerns. All four were in working order, well gotten up and 
popular, for they paid good dividends. 

“ Nucingen might, of course, count on getting the differ- 
ences if the shares went up, but this formed no part of the 
baron’s schemes ; he left the shares at sea-level on the market 
to tempt the fishes. 

“So he had massed his securities as Napoleon massed his 
troops, all with a view to suspending payment in the thick of 
the approaching crisis of 1826-27 which revolutionized 
European markets. If Nucingen had had his Prince of 
Wagram, he might have said, like Napoleon from the heights 
of Santon, ‘ Make a careful survey of the situation ; on such 
and such a day, at such an hour, funds will be poured in at 
such a spot.’ But in whom could he confide? Du Tillet had 
no suspicion of his own complicity in Nucingen’s plot; and 
the bold baron had learned from his previous experiments in 
suspensions of payment that he must have some man whom 
he could trust to act at need as a lever upon the creditor. 
Nucingen had never a nephew, he dared not take a confidant; 
yet he must have a devoted and intelligent Claparon, a born 
diplomatist with a good manner, a man worthy of him, and 
fit to take office under Government. Such connections are 
not made in a day nor yet in a year. By this time Rastignac 
had been so thoroughly entangled by Nucingen, that being, 
like the Prince de la Paix, equally beloved by the King and 
Queen of Spain, he fancied that he (Rastignac) had secured 
a very valuable dupe in Nucingen ! For a long while he had 
laughed at a man whose capacities he was unable to estimate ; 
he ended in a sober, serious, and devout admiration of Nucin- 


356 


THE FIRM OF NUCINGEN. 


gen, owning that Nucingen really had the power which he 
thought that he himself alone possessed. 

“From Rastignac’s introduction to society in Paris, he had 
been led to contemn it utterly. From the year 1820 he 
thought, like the baron, that honesty was a question of 
appearances ; he looked upon the world as a mixture of cor- 
ruption and rascality of every sort. If he admitted excep- 
tions, he condemned the mass; he put no belief in any virtue 
— men did right or wrong, as circumstances decided. His 
worldly wisdom was the work of a moment ; he learned his 
lesson at the summit of Pere Lachaise one day when he buried 
a poor, good man there ; it was his Delphine’s father, who 
died deserted by his daughters and their husbands, a dupe of 
our society and of the truest affection. Rastignac then and 
there resolved to exploit this world, to wear full dress of 
virtue, honesty, and fine manners. He was empanoplied in 
selfishness. When the young scion of nobility discovered 
that Nucingen wore the same armor, he respected him much 
as some knight mounted upon a barb and arrayed in damas- 
cened steel would have respected an adversary equally well 
horsed and equipped at a tournament in the Middle Ages. 
But for the time he had grown effeminate amid the delights 
of Capua. The friendship of such a woman as the Baronne 
de Nucingen is of a kind that sets a man abjuring egoism in 
all its forms. 

“Delphine had been deceived once already; in her first ven- 
ture of the affections she came across a piece of Birmingham 
manufacture, in the shape of the late lamented de Marsay; 
and therefore she could not but feel a limitless affection for a 
young provincial with all the provincial’s articles of faith. 
Her tenderness reacted upon Rastignac. So by the time that 
Nucingen had put his wife’s friend into the harness in which 
the exploiter always gets the exploited, he had reached the 
precise juncture when he (the baron) meditated a third sus- 
pension of payment. To Rastignac he confided his position; 


THE FIRM OF NUCINGEN. 


357 


he pointed out to Rastignac a means of making ‘reparation.* 
As a consequence of his intimacy, he was expected to play 
the part of confederate. The baron judged it unsafe to com- 
municate the whole of his plot to his conjugal collaborator. 
Rastignac quite believed in impending disaster; and the 
baron allowed him to believe further that he (Rastignac) 
saved the shop. 

“ But when there are so many threads in a skein, there are 
apt to be knots. Rastignac trembled for Delphine’s money. 
He stipulated that Delphine must be independent and her 
estate separated from her husband’s, swearing to himself that 
he would repay her by trebling her fortune. As, however, 
Rastignac said nothing of himself, Nucingen begged him to 
take, in the event of success, twenty-five shares of a thousand 
francs in the argentiferous lead-mines, and Eugene took them 
— not to offend him ! Nucingen had put Rastignac up to this 
the day before that evening in the Rue Joubert when our 
friend counseled Malvina to marry. A cold shiver ran 
through Rastignac at the sight of so many happy folk in Paris 
going to and fro unconscious of the impending loss; even as 
a young commander might shiver at the first sight of an army 
drawn up before a battle. He saw the d’Aiglemonts, the 
d’Aldriggers, and Beaudenord. Poor little Isaure and Gode- 
froid playing at love, what were they but Acis and Galatea 
under the rock which a hulking Polyphemus was about to send 
down upon them?” 

“ That monkey of a Bixiou has something almost like 
talent,” said Blondet. 

“Oh! so I am not maundering now?” asked Bixiou, en- 
joying his success as he looked round at his surprised auditors. 
“ For two months past,” he continued, “ Godefroid had given 
himself up to all the little pleasures of preparation for the mar- 
riage. At such times men are like birds building nests in 
spring ; they come and go, pick up their bits of straw, and fly 
off with them in their beaks to line the nest that is to hold a 


358 


THE FIRM CF NUCINGEN. 


brood of young birds by-and-by. Isaure’s bridegroom had 
taken a house in the Rue de la Plancher at a thousand crowns, 
a comfortable little house, neither too large nor too small, 
which suited them. Every morning he went round to take a 
look at the workmen and to superintend the painters. He 
had introduced ‘ comfort ’ (the only good thing in England) — 
heating apparatus to maintain an even temperature all over the 
house ; fresh, soft colors, carefully chosen furniture, neither 
too showy nor too much in the fashion ; spring-blinds fitted to 
every window inside and out ; plate and new carriages. He 
had seen to the stables, coach-house, and harness-room, where 
Toby, Joby, Paddy floundered and fidgeted about like a mar- 
mot let loose, apparently rejoiced to know that there would be 
women about the place and a ‘ lady ! ’ This fervent passion 
of a man that sets up housekeeping, choosing clocks, going to 
visit his betrothed with his pockets full of patterns of stuffs, 
consulting her as to the bedroom furniture, going, coming, 
and trotting about, for love’s sake — all this, I say, is a spec- 
tacle in the highest degree calculated to rejoice the hearts 
of honest people, especially tradespeople. And as nothing 
pleases folk better than the marriage of a good-looking young 
fellow of seven-and-twenty and a charming girl of nineteen 
that dances admirably well, Godefroid in his perplexity over 
the corbeille (wedding-basket) asked Mme. de Nucingen and 
Rastignac to breakfast with him and advise him on this all- 
important point. He hit likewise on the happy idea of asking 
his cousin d’Aiglemont and his wife to meet them, as well as 
Mme. de Serizy. Women of the world are ready enough to 
join for once in an improvised breakfast-party at a bachelor’s 
rooms.” 

“ It is their way of playing truant,” put in Blondet. 

“ Of course they went over the new house,” resumed 
Bixiou. “ Married women relish these little expeditions 
as ogres relish warm flesh ; they feel young again with the 
young bliss, unspoiled as yet by fruition. Breakfast was 


THE FIRM OF NUCINGEN. 


359 


served in Godefroid’s sitting-room, decked out like a troop- 
horse for a farewell to bachelor life. There were dainty little 
dishes such as women love to devour, nibble at, and sip of a 
morning, when they are usually alarmingly hungry and hor- 
ribly afraid to confess to it. It would seem that a woman 
compromises herself by admitting that she is hungry. ‘ Why 
have you come alone ? ’ inquired Godefroid when Rastignac 
appeared. ‘ Mine, de Nucingen is out of spirits ; I will tell 
you all about it,’ answered Rastignac, with the air of a man 
whose temper has been tried. * A quarrel ? ’ hazarded Gode- 
froid. ‘ No.’ At four o’clock the women took flight for the 
Bois de Boulogne ; Rastignac stayed in the room and looked 
out of the window, fixing his melancholy gaze upon Toby, 
Joby, Paddy, who stood, his arms crossed in Napoleonic 
fashion, audaciously posted in front of Beaudenord’s cab-horse. 
The child could only control the animal with his shrill little 
voice, but the horse was afraid of Joby, Toby. 

“ ‘ Well,’ began Godefroid, ‘what is the matter with you, 
my dear fellow ? You look gloomy and anxious ; your gayety 
is forced. You are tormented by incomplete happiness. It 
is wretched, and that is a fact, when one cannot marry the 
woman one loves at the mayor’s office and the church.’ 

“‘Have you courage to hear what I have to say? I 

wonder whether you will see how much a man must be at- 
tached to a friend if he can be guilty of such a breach of 

confidence as this for his sake.’ 

“ Something in Rastignac’s voice stung like a lash of a 
whip. 

“ ‘ What?' asked Godefroid de Beaudenord, turning pale. 

“ * I was unhappy over your joy ; I had not the heart to 
keep such a secret to myself when I saw all these preparations, 
your happiness in bloom.* 

“ ‘Just say it out in three words ! * 

“ ‘ Swear to me on your honor that you will be as silent as 
the grave ’ 


360 


THE FIRM OF NUCINGEN. 


“ ‘ As the grave/ repeated Beaudenord. 

“ ‘ That if one of your nearest relatives were concerned in 
this secret, he should not know it.’ 

“‘No.’ 

“ ‘ Very well. Nucingen started to-night for Brussels. 
He must file his schedule if he cannot arrange a settlement. 
This very morning Delphine petitioned for the separation of 
her estate. You may still save your fortune.’ 

“ ‘ How?’ faltered Godefroid ; the blood turned to ice in 
his veins. 

“ ‘ Simply write to the Baron de Nucingen, antedating your 
letter a fortnight, and instruct him to invest all your capital 
in shares.’ Rastignac suggested Claparon and Company, and 
continued — ‘ You have a fortnight, a month, possibly three 
months, in which to realize and make something; the shares 
are still going up ’ 

“ ‘But d’Aiglemont, who was here at breakfast with us, has 
a million in Nucingen’s bank.’ 

“ ‘ Look here ; I do not know whether there will be enough 
of these shares to cover it ; and, beside, I am not his friend, 
I cannot betray Nucingen’s confidence. You must not speak 
to d’Aiglemont. If you say a word, you must answer to me 
for the consequences.’ 

“ Godefroid stood stockstill for ten minutes. 

“‘Do you accept? Yes or no?’ said the inexorable 
Rastignac. 

“Godefroid took up the pen, wrote at Rastignac’s dicta- 
tion, and signed his name. 

“ ‘ My poor cousin ! ’ he cried. 

“‘Each for himself,’ said Rastignac. ‘And there is one 
more settled ! ’ he added to himself as he left Godefroid de 
Beaudenord. 

“While Rastignac was manoeuvring thus in Paris, imagine 
the state of things on the Bourse. A friend of mine, a pro- 
vincial, a stupid creature, once asked me as we came past the 


THE FIRM OF NUCINGEN. 


361 


Bourse between four and five in the afternoon what all that 
crowd of chatterers was doing, what they could possibly find 
to say to each other, and why they were wandering to and fro 
when business in public securities was over for the day. 
‘ My friend,’ said I, ‘they have made their meal, and now 
they are digesting it ; while they digest it, they gossip about 
their neighbors, or there would be no commercial security in 
Paris. Concerns are floated here, such and such a man — 
Palma, for instance, who is something the same here as 
Sinard at the Academie Royale des Sciences — Palma says, 
“Let the speculation be made!” and the speculation is 
made.’ ” 

“What a man that Hebrew is,” put in Blondet ; “he has 
not had a university education, but a universal education. 
And universal does not in his case mean superficial ; whatever 
he knows, he knows to the bottom. He has a genius, an 
intuitive faculty for business. He is the oracle of all the 
lynxes that rule the Paris market j they will not touch an 
investment until Palma has looked into it. He looks solemn, 
he listens, ponders, and reflects ; his interlocutor thinks that 
after this consideration he has come round his man, till Palma 
says, ‘This will not do for me.’ The most extraordinary 
thing about Palma, to my mind, is the fact that he and Wer- 
brust were partners for ten years, and there was never the 
shadow of a disagreement between them.” 

“ That is the way with the very strong or the very weak ; 
any two between the extremes fall out and lose no time in 
making enemies of each other,” said Couture. 

“ Nucingen, you see, had neatly and skillfully put a little 
bombshell under the colonnades of the Bourse, and toward 
four o’clock in the afternoon it exploded. ‘ Here is some- 
thing serious ; have you heard the news ? ’ asked du Tillet, 
drawing Werbrust into a corner. ‘ Here is Nucingen gone 
off to Brussels, and his wife petitioning for the separation of 
her estate.’ 


362 


THE FIRM OF NUCINGEN. 


“ 11 Are you and he in it together for a liquidation? ’ asked 
Werbrust, smiling. 

“‘No foolery, Werbrust,’ said du Tillet. ‘You know 
the holders of his paper. Now, look here. There is business 
in it. Shares in this new concern of ours have gone up twenty 
per cent, already ; they will go up to five-and-twenty by the 
end of the quarter ; you know why. They are going to pay 
a splendid dividend.’ 

“ ‘ Sly dog,’ said Werbrust. ‘ Get along with you ; you are 
a devil with long and sharp claws, and you have them deep 
in the butter.’ 

“ ‘Just let me speak or we shall not have time to operate. 
I hit on the idea as soon as I heard the news. I positively 
saw Mme. de Nucingen crying; she is afraid for her fortune.’ 

“‘Poor little thing!’ said the old Alsacian Jew, with 
an ironical expression. ‘Well?’ he added, as du Tibet was 
silent. 

“ ‘ Web. At my place I have a thousand shares of a thou- 
sand francs in our concern ; Nucingen handed them over to 
me to put on the market, do you understand ? Good. Now 
let us buy up a million of Nucingen’s paper at a discount of 
ten or twenty per cent., and we shall make a handsome per- 
centage out of it. We shall be debtors and creditors both ; 
confusion will be worked ! But we must set about it care- 
fully, or the holders may imagine that we are operating in 
Nucingen’s interests.* 

“Then Werbrust understood. He squeezed du Tibet’s 
hand with an expression such as a woman’s face wears when 
she is playing her neighbor a trick. 

“ Martin Falleix came up. ‘ Web, have you heard the 
news? ’ he asked. ‘ Nucingen has stopped payment.’ 

“ ‘Pooh,’ said Werbrust, ‘pray don’t noise it about ; give 
those that hold his paper a chance.’ v 

“ ‘ What is the cause of the smash ; do you know? ’ put in 
Claparon. 


THE FIRM OF NUCINGEN. 


363 


“‘You know nothing about it/ said du Tillet. ‘There 
isn’t any smash. Payment will be made in full. Nucingen 
will start again ; I shall find him all the money he wants. I 
know the causes of the suspension. He put all his capital into 
Mexican securities, and they are sending him metal in return; 
old Spanish cannon cast in such an insane fashion that they 
melted down gold and bell-metal and church plate for it, and 
all the wreck of the Spanish dominion in the Indies. The 
specie is slow in coming, and the dear baron is hard up. 
That is all.’ 

“ ‘ It is a fact,’ said Werbrust ; ‘ I am taking his paper my- 
self at twenty per cent, discount.’ 

“ The news spread swift as fire in a straw-rick. The most 
contradictory reports got about. But such confidence was felt 
in the firm after the two previous suspensions, that every one 
stuck to Nucingen ’s paper. ‘ Palma must lend us a hand/ 
said Werbrust. 

“ Now Palma was the Kellers’ oracle, and the Kellers were 
brimful of Nucingen’s paper. A hint from Palma would be 
enough. Werbrust arranged with Palma, and he rang the 
alarm bell. There was a panic next day on the Bourse. The 
Kellers, acting on Palma’s advice, let go Nucingen’s paper at 
ten per cent, of loss; they set the example on ’Change, for 
they were supposed to know very well what they were about. 
Taillefer followed up with three hundred thousand francs at a 
discount of twenty per cent., and Martin Falleix with two 
hundred thousand at fifteen. Gigonnet saw what was going 
on. He helped to spread the panic, with a view to buying 
up Nucingen’s paper himself and making a commission of two 
or three per cent, out of Werbrust. 

“In a corner of the Bourse he came upon poor Matifat, 
who had three hundred thousand francs in Nucingen’s bank. 
Matifat, ghastly and haggard, beheld the terrible Gigonnet, 
the bill-discounter of his old quarter, coming up to worry 
him. He shuddered in spite of himself. 


364 


THE FIRM OF A' UC IN GEN. 


“ * Things are looking bad. There is a crisis on hand. 
Nucingen is compounding with his creditors. But this does 
not interest you, Daddy Matifat ; you are out of business.’ 

“ ‘ Oh, well, you are mistaken, Gigonnet ;* I am in for three 
hundred thousand francs. I meant to speculate in Spanish 
bonds.’ 

“ 4 Then you have saved your money. Spanish bonds would 
have swept everything away ; whereas I am prepared to offer 
you something like fifty per cent, for your account with 
Nucingen.’ 

“ ‘I would rather wait for the composition,’ said Matifat; 
' I never knew a banker yet that paid less than fifty per cent. 

Ah, if it were only a matter of ten per cent, of loss ’ added 

the retired man of drugs. 

“ * Well, will you take fifteen ? ’ asked Gigonnet. 

“ ‘ You are very keen about it, it seems to me,’ said Matifat. 

“ * Good-night.’ 

“ ‘ Will you take twelve ?' 

“ e Done,’ said Gigonnet. 

“ Before night two millions had been bought up in the 
names of the three chance-united confederates, and posted by 
du Tillet to the debit side of Nucingen’s account. Next day 
they drew their premium. 

“ The dainty little old Baroness d’Aldrigger was at break- 
fast with her two daughters and Godefroid, when Rastignac 
came in with a diplomatic air to steer the conversation on the 
financial crisis. The Baron de Nucingen felt a lively regard 
for the d’Aldrigger family ; he was prepared, if things went 
amiss, to cover the baroness’ account with his best securities, 
to wit, some shares in the argentiferous lead-mines, but the 
application must come from the lady. 

“ ‘ Poor Nucingen ! ’ said the baroness. * What can have 
become of him ? ’ 

“ 'He is in Belgium. His wife is petitioning for a separa- 


* See “ Cesar Birotteau.” 


THE FIRM OF NUCINGEN. 


365 


tion of her property 3 but he has gone to see if he can arrange 
with some bankers to see him through.’ 

“‘Dear me! That reminds me of my poor husband! 
Dear Monsieur de Rastignac, how you must feel this, so at- 
tached as you are to the house ! ’ 

“‘If all the indifferent are covered, his personal friends 
will be rewarded later on. He will pull through 3 he is a 
clever man.’ 

“ ‘ An honest man, above all things,’ said the baroness. 

“A month later, Nucingen met all his liabilities, with no 
formalities beyond the letters by which creditors signified the 
investments which they preferred to take in exchange for their 
capital 3 and with no action on the part of other banks beyond 
registering the transfer of Nucingen’s paper for the invest- 
ments in favor. 

“While du Tillet, Werbrust, Claparon, Gigonnet, and 
others that thought themselves clever were fetching in Nucin- 
gen’s paper from abroad with a premium of one per cent. — 
for it was still worth their while to exchange it for securities 
in a rising market — there was all the more talk on the Bourse, 
because there was nothing now to fear. They babbled over 
Nucingen 3 he was discussed and judged 3 they even slandered 
him. His luxurious life, his enterprises ! When a man has 
so much on his hands, he overreaches himself, and so forth, 
and so forth. 

“The talk was at its height, when several people were 
greatly astonished to receive letters from Geneva, Basel, 
Milan, Naples, Genoa, Marseilles, and London, in which 
their correspondents, previously advised of the failure, in- 
formed them that somebody was offering one per cent, for 
Nucingen’s paper ! ‘There is something up,’ said the lynxes 
of the Bourse. 

“ The Court meanwhile had granted the application for 
Mme. de Nucingen’s separation as to her estate, and the 
question became still more complicated. The newspapers 


366 


THE FIRM OF NUCINGEN. 


announced the return of M. le Baron de Nucingen from a 
journey to Belgium ; he had been arranging, it was said, with 
a well-known Belgian firm to resume the working of some 
coal-pits in the Bois de Bossut. The baron himself appeared 
on the Bourse, and never even took the trouble to contradict 
the slanders circulating against him. He scorned to reply 
through the press ; he simply bought a splendid estate just 
outside Paris for two millions of francs. Six weeks afterward, 
the Bordeaux shipping intelligence announced that two vessels 
with cargoes of bullion to the amount of seven millions, con- 
signed to the firm of Nucingen, were lying in the river. 

“ Then it was plain to Palma, Werbrust, and du Tillet that 
the trick had been played. Nobody else was any the wiser. 
The three scholars studied the means by which the great 
bubble had been created, saw that it had been preparing for 
eleven months, and pronounced Nucingen the greatest finan- 
cier in Europe. 

“ Rastignac understood nothing of all this, but he had the 
four hundred thousand francs which Nucingen had allowed 
him to shear from the Parisian sheep, and he portioned his 
sisters. D’Aiglemont, at a hint from his cousin Beaudenord, 
besought Rastignac to accept ten per cent, upon his million 
if he would undertake to convert it into shares in a canal 
which is still to make, for Nucingen worked things with the 
Government to such purpose that the concessionaries find it 
to their interest not to finish their scheme. Charles Grandet 
implored Delphine’s lover to use his interest to secure shares 
for him in exchange for his cash. And altogether Rastignac 
played the part of Law for ten days ; he had the prettiest 
duchesses in France praying him to allot shares to them, and 
to-day the young man very likely has an income of forty 
thousand livres, derived in the first instance from the argen- 
tiferous lead-mines.* * 

“If every one was better off, who can have lost?** asked 
Finot. 


THE FIRM OF NUCINGEN. 


367 


“Hear the conclusion,” rejoined Bixiou. “ The Marquis 
d’Aiglemont and Beaudenord (I put them forward as two ex- 
amples out of many) kept their allotted shares, enticed by the 
so-called dividend that fell due a few months afterward. They 
had another three per cent, on their capital, they sang Nu- 
cingen’s praises, and took his part at a time when everybody 
suspected that he was going to bankrupt. Godefroid married 
his beloved Isaure and took shares in the mines to the value 
of a hundred thousand francs. The Nucingens gave a ball 
even more splendid than people expected of them on the occa- 
sion of the wedding ; Delphine’s present to the bride was a 
charming set of rubies. Isaure danced, a happy wife, a girl 
no longer. The little baroness was more than ever a Shep- 
herdess of the Alps. The ball was at its height when Malvina, 
the Andalouse of Musset’s poem, heard du Tibet’s voice drily 
advising her to take Desroches. Desroches, warmed to the 
right degree by Rastignac and Nucingen, tried to come to an 
understanding financially; but at the first hint of shares in 
the mines for the bride’s portion, he broke off and went back 
to the Matifats in the Rue du Cherche-Midi, only to find the 
accursed canal shares which Gigonnet had foisted on Matifat 
in lieu of cash. 

“They had not long to wait for the crash. The firm of 
Claparon did business on too large a scale, the capital was 
locked up, the concern ceased to serve its purposes, or to pay 
dividends, though the speculations were sound. These mis- 
fortunes coincided with the events of 1827. In 1829 it was too 
well known that Claparon was a man of straw set up by the 
two giants ; he fell from his pedestal. Shares that had fetched 
twelve hundred and fifty francs fell to four hundred, though 
intrinsically they were worth six. Nucingen, knowing their 
value, bought them up at four. 

“ Meanwhile the little Baroness d’Aldrigger had sold out of 
the mines that paid no dividends, and Godefroid had rein- 
vested the money belonging to his wife and her mother in 


368 


THE FIRM OF NUCINGEN. 


Claparon’s concern. Debts compelled them to realize when 
the shares were at their lowest, so that of seven hundred thou- 
sand francs only two hundred thousand remained. They made 
a clearance, and all that was left was prudently invested in the 
three per cents, at seventy-five. Godefroid, the sometime gay 
and careless bachelor who had lived without taking thought 
all his life long, found himself saddled with a little goose of 
a wife totally unfitted to bear adversity (indeed, before six 
months were over he had witnessed the anserine transformation 
of his beloved), to say nothing of a mother-in-law whose mind 
ran on pretty dresses while she had not bread to eat. The 
two families must live together to live at all. It was only by 
stirring up all his considerably chilled interest that Godefroid 
got a post in the audit department. His friends ? They were 
out of town. His relatives? All astonishment and promises. 

‘ What ! my dear boy ! Oil ! count upon me ! Poor fellow ! ’ 
and Beaudenord was clean forgotten fifteen minutes afterward. 
He owed his place to Nucingen and de Vandenesse. 

“And to-day these so estimable and unfortunate people are 
living on a fourth floor (not counting the entresol) in the Rue 
du Mont Thabor. Malvina, the Adolphus’ pearl of a grand- 
daughter, has not a farthing. She gives music-lessons, not to 
be a burden upon her brother-in-law. You may see a tall, 
dark, thin, withered woman, like a mummy escaped from 
Passalacqua’s, about afoot through the streets of Paris. In 
1830 Beaudenord lost his situation just as his wife presented 
him with a fourth child. A family of eight and two servants 
(Wirth and his wife) and an income of eight thousand livres. 
And at this moment the mines are paying so well that an 
original share of a thousand francs brings in a dividend of 
cent, per cent. 

“Rastignac and Mme. de Nucingen bought the shares sold 
by the baroness and Godefroid. The Revolution made a 
peer of France of Nucingen and a grand officer of the Legion 
of Honor. He has not stopped payment since 1830, but still 


THE FIRM OF NUCINGEH. 


369 


I hear that he has something like seventeen millions. He put 
faith in the Ordinances of July, sold out of all his investments, 
and boldly put his money into the Funds when the three per 
cents, stood at forty-five. He persuaded the Tuileries that 
this was done out of devotion, and about the same time he 
and du Tillet between them swallowed down three millions 
belonging to that great scamp Philippe Bridau. 

“Quite lately our baron was walking along the Rue de 
Rivoli on his way to the Bois when he met the Baroness 
d’Aldrigger under the colonnade. The little old lady wore a 
tiny green bonnet with a rose-colored lining, a flowered gown, 
and a mantilla ; altogether, she was more than ever the 
Shepherdess of the Alps. She could no more be made to 
understand the causes of her poverty than the sources of her 
wealth. As she went along, leaning upon poor Malvina, that 
model of heroic devotion, she seemed to be the young girl 
and Malvina the old mother. Wirth followed them, carrying 
an umbrella. 

“ ‘ Dere are beoples whose vordune I vound it imbossible 
to make,’ said the baron, addressing his companion (M. 
Cointet, a cabinet minister). ‘ Now dot de baroxysm off 
brincibles haf bassed off, chust reinshtate dot boor Peaute- 
nord.’ 

“ So Beaudenord went back to his desk, thanks to Nucin- 
gen’s good offices ; and the d’Aldriggers extol Nucingen as a 
hero of friendship, for he always sends the little Shepherdess 
of the Alps and her daughters invitations to his balls. No 
creature whatsoever can be made to understand that the baron 
yonder three times did his best to plunder the public without 
breaking the letter of the law, and enriched people in spite of 
himself. No one has a word to say against him. If anybody 
should suggest that a big capitalist often is another word for a 
cut-throat, it would be a most egregious calumny. If stocks 
rise and fall, if property improves and depreciates, the fluctua- 
tions of the market are caused by a common movement, a 
24 


370 


THE FIRM OF NUCINGEN. 


something in the air, a tide in the affairs of men subject like 
other tides to lunar influences. The great Arago is much to 
blame for giving us no scientific theory to account for this 
important phenomenon. The only outcome of all this is an 
axiom which I have never seen anywhere in print ” 

“And that is? ” 

“The debtor is more than a match for the creditor.” 

“Oh!” said Blondet. “For my own part, all that we 
have been saying seems to me to be a paraphrase of the 
epigram in which Montesquieu summed up V Esprit des Lois ” 
(The soul of the laws). 

“What?” said Finot. 

“ Laws are like spiders* webs ; the big flies get through, 
while the little ones are caught.” 

“Then, what are you for?” asked Finot. 

“For absolute government, the only kind of government 
under which enterprises against the spirit of the law can be 
put down. Yes. Arbitrary rule is the salvation of a country 
when it comes to the support of justice, for the right of mercy 
is strictly one-sided. The king can pardon a fraudulent bank- 
rupt ; he cannot do anything for the victims. The letter of 
the law is fatal to modern society.” 

“Just get that into the electors’ heads ! ” said Bixiou. 

“ Some one has undertaken to do it.” 

“Who?” 

“Time. As the Bishop of Leon said, ‘ Liberty is ancient, 
but kingship is eternal ; ’ any nation in its right mind returns 
to monarchical government in one form or another.” 

“I say, there was somebody next door,” remarked Finot, 
hearing us rise to go. 

“There always is somebody next door,” retorted Bixiou* 
But he must have been drunk. 


Paris, November , 1837. 


AN EPISODE OF THE REIGN OF 
TERROR 

(Un Episode sous la Terreur ). 

Translated by Jno. Rudd, B. A. 

About eight o’clock in the evening of January 22, 1793, 
an old gentlewoman walked down the steep declivity of the 
Saint-Martin suburb, ending at the church of Saint-Laurent, 
Paris. Footfalls could scarcely be heard, for the snow had 
fallen heavily during the day. The streets were deserted. 
The fear, natural to a profound silence, was further strength- 
ened by the terror to which the whole of France was then 
stricken. The old gentlewoman had not met any one. Her 
dim and failing sight prevented her from seeing afar off a few 
pedestrians, thinly scattered as shadows, along the broad way 
of the faubourg. 

Bravely she walked through the solitude as though her age 
might prove a talisman against all dangers ; but, after leaving 
the Rue des Morts, she thought she heard the heavy and firm 
tread of a man behind her. She felt that unconsciously she 
had been listening to this tramp for some length of time. She 
attempted to walk faster, terrified at the thought of being fol- 
lowed ; the bright light of a store-window seemed to offer a 
solution of the doubt that troubled her. In the shadow be- 
yond the. horizontal rays of light cast across the pavement, she 
abruptly turned around and plainly perceived a human figure 
dimly looming through the mist. That one imperfect glimpse 
was enough. For an instant she staggered under a stress of 
terror ; no longer was there room for doubt that this man un- 
known had, step by step, tracked her from her house. The 
hope of escape from this spy gave strength to her weakened 

( 371 ) 


372 AN EPISODE OF THE REIGN OF TERROR. 


limbs. She ran for a few minutes, reached a confectionery 
store, entered it and fell, rather than sat, upon a chair stand- 
ing in front of the counter. A young woman, who was work- 
ing embroidery, looked up on hearing the creaking latch of 
the door, and, recognizing through the glass-door an an- 
tiquated mantle of purple silk which the old lady wore, hurried 
to open a drawer as if intending to take from thence something 
that she had to give her. Both the action and appearance 
of the young woman implied a wish to speedily relieve herself 
of the company of her strange and unwelcome visitor. She 
found the drawer empty and gave utterance to an exclamation 
of anger. Without appearing to notice the old lady she came 
quickly from behind the counter and, going to the rear room, 
called her husband, who immediately responded. 

“ Where have you put ? ” she asked him, in a mysterious 

whisper, not finishing the sentence, but calling to his notice 
the antiquated person, with a meaning glance. 

The confectioner could see nothing but the great hood of 
black silk encircled with ribbons of purple which the stranger 
wore; he retired, with a motion to his wife which plainly 
meant, “ Can you imagine I should leave that on the 
counter ? ” 

The visitor remained silent and immobile, and the wife, 
astonished at this, was moved with compassion and curiosity 
as she viewed her. It was plainly to be seen that some recent 
terror had spread an extra paleness over the complexion of a 
face naturally livid, and like .that of one given up to secret 
austerities. The covering of her head was arranged to con- 
ceal the hair, whitened doubtless by age, for the cleanliness 
of the collar she wore precluded the idea of her wearing 
powder. Her countenance was grave and noble, but this con- 
cealment of its natural adornment gave an air of monastical 
severity. The young storekeeper was sure that the -stranger 
was one of the proscribed nobles and that she most probably 
had belonged to the Court. 


AN EPISODE OF THE REIGN OF TERROR. 373 


tl Madame?” she said with formal respect, forgetful of the 
proscribed title. 

The old lady answered not. Some alarming object might 
have been painted upon the window of the store, her eyes 
were so fixed upon it. 

“What is the matter, citizeness ? ” the master of the place 
inquired as he reentered. He then drew the attention of his 
visitor to a small, blue cardboard box and held it out to her. 

“It is nothing, my friends, nothing,” she made answer in 
gentlest tones, raising her eyes to give the proprietor a grateful 
look. Thus seeing a phrygian* cap upon his head, she gave 
utterance to a low cry: “Ah! you it is that has betrayed 
me ! ” 

A shrug, the deprecating gesture of horror, was the reply 
made by both the young woman and her husband. The un- 
known lady reddened as she felt a relief of feeling for her un- 
just suspicion. 

“Excuse me,” she said with childish affability. After 
taking a gold louis from her pocket she tendered it to the 
confectioner, saying, “ Here is the sum agreed upon.” 

Poor folk can readily divine a disguised poverty. The 
storekeeper and his wife gave each a glance at the other which 
expressed the same thought. The coin was -doubtless her last 
one. Her eyes sadly rested upon it and her hands tremblingly 
offered it. Yet no avarice showed in this dumb entreaty. 
The full extent of her sacrifice was manifestly apparent to her. 
Her features showed the undoubted tracings of hunger and 
want. They were legible as those of asceticism and timidity. 
Her attire showed vestiges of luxury. It was silk, well-worn; 
the mantle, though faded, was clean ; the laces carefully 
darned ; it was, in all, the remnants of opulence. The pair 
of storekeepers were divided between pity and self-interest ; 
they soothed their tradesmen consciences with phrases: 

“ Citizeness, you appear but feeble ” 

* The distinguishing sign of the Jacquerie. 


374 AN EPISODE OF THE REIGN OF TERROR . 

“Perhaps madame would take something?” said the wife, 
cutting off her husband. 

“ We have good soup,” he added. 

It is very cold ; it may be that madame is made chill with 
her walk; you may rest here and warm yourself.” 

“ Pie is not so black as he is painted, this devil,” cried the 
husband. 

These kind words won the heart of the old lady. She told 
them that a man had followed her and she was afraid of re- 
turning alone. 

“And is that all?” said the man with the phrygian cap. 
“Wait for me, citizeness.” 

He gave the louis to his wife. His storekeeping soul was 
moved by a resemblance to gratitude which ever slips into such 
petty minds when an exorbitant price has been received for an 
article of little value. He donned the uniform of the Na- 
tional Guard, took up his cap, slung on his sword, and ap- 
peared under arms. Meantime the wife had been reflecting. 
As often occurs in many hearts, reflection will close the open 
hand of benevolence. She was afraid lest her husband should 
become mixed up in some dangerous affair ; ill at ease and 
anxious, she pulled the tail of his coat, intending to stop his 
going. The worthy man, however, obeyed the dictates of 
Charity and offered himself as the lady’s escort. 

“ Is it that the man who has affrighted her is now prowling 
outside?” asked the wife tremblingly. 

“ I am afraid so,” said the old lady, very simply. 

“ Suppose that he is a spy. It may be a conspiracy. Don’t 
go. Take back the box.” The sudden compassion that had 
warmed him was chilled by these words whispered in his ear 
by the wife of his bosom. 

“ Well, there, I will say two words to the fellow and get 
rid of him,” he said. He opened the door and hurried out. 

Passive as a child and nearly paralyzed with fear the old 
gentlewoman again sat down. The confectioner very shortly 


AN EPISODE OF THE REIGN OF TERROR. 375 

returned ; his face, red by nature and further scorched by the 
fires of his bakery, had suddenly turned pale, and he was in 
such extreme terror that his legs trembled and his eyes were 
drunken with fear. 

“ Wretched aristocrat !” he shrieked, in fury, “is it that 
you would cut off our heads ? Go away from here, move your 
heels, let me see them, don’t you dare to come back; you must 
not suppose that I will supply you with the means for con- 
spiracy.” 

Thus saying the confectioner made an effort to regain pos- 
session of the little box which was ensconced in one of the 
old lady’s pockets. The bold hands of the storekeeper had 
barely touched her clothes but that she sprang to the open 
door, preferring to meet danger without protection, other than 
God’s, than to restore what she had purchased. She assumed 
the agility of youth, disappeared through the doorway, and 
left the husband and wife crushed with trembling and amaze- 
ment. 

When she found herself alone on the street she walked 
rapidly ; but soon her strength deserted her as she once more 
heard the creaking of the snow under the heavy footsteps of 
the spy. Perforce she stopped short ; the man did likewise. 
Fain would she have spoken to him, but she dared not ; either 
by reason of her terror or a lack of wonted intelligence she 
could not even look at him. Somewhat recovering she slowly 
resumed her walk. Step by step did the man measure hers, 
he kept the same distance behind her, moving as her shadow. 
As the silent couple repassed the church of Saint-Laurent the 
clock struck nine. 

It is the nature of even the weakest souls to fall back into 
tranquillity after a time of violent agitation ; for our bodily 
powers are limited though our feelings may be manifold. So 
the old gentlewoman, not receiving any injury from her ap- 
parent annoyer, began to imagine him a secret friend watching 
over and protecting her. She weighed in her mind the de- 


376 AN EPISODE OF THE REIGN OF TERROR. 


tails of numerous other appearances of the mysterious attend- 
ant and tried to find some plausible pretext for this so consoling 
thought. She took pleasure in giving credit to him for good, 
rather than discredit for sinister, motives. She walked on 
with a firmer tread, and forgot the terror he had evidently 
excited in the confectioner, toward the higher portion of the 
Faubourg Saint-Martin. 

In about half an hour’s time she came to a house near the 
junction of the main street of the suburb with that one run- 
ning out to the Pantin barrier. To-day this is one of the 
loneliest streets in all Paris. The north wind blew from the 
Buttes Chaumont and whistled among the houses, or properly 
cottages, sparsely scattered through the thinly inhabited little 
valley where the fences are built of mud and refuse bones. 
This woe-begone district is the natural home of poverty and 
grim despair. The man, intent on following the poor crea- 
ture — courageously threading these gloomy and silent streets 
— appeared struck with the spectacle. He paused reflectingly, 
standing in a hesitating manner, being hardly visible by the 
light of a street lantern which flickeringly pierced the fog. 
Terror gave sight to the gentlewoman and she fancied that 
she saw a something sinister on the face of this unknown man. 
Her terrors again revived, but profiting by his curious hesita- 
tion she swept like a shadow to the portal of the isolated 
dwelling, touched a spring and disappeared with phantasma- 
goric alertness. The man stood motionless, gating at the 
house, which was, as it were, a type of the miserable buildings 
of the district. 

The hovel, tottering to its fall, was built of rough blocks of 
porous stone, its coating of yellow stucco was seamed with 
cracks, and only seemed to be awaiting a rough wind for its 
utter demolition. The brown tiled roof, covered with moss, 
had sunk in numerous spots, giving the impression that the 
weight of the accumulated snow might crush it down at any 
moment. There were three windows in each story; their 


AN EPISODE OF THE REIGN OF TERROR. 377 

frames rotten with dampness and shrunken with the heat of 
the sun, it was plain that the outer cold must penetrate to the 
interior. This lonely dwelling stood like an ancient tower 
that Time had forgotten to raze. Irregularly cut in the roof 
were the garret windows whence gleamed a faint light ; the 
rest of the house was in dense obscurity. The old lady with 
difficulty climbed the clumsy stairway, keeping a fast hold of 
the rope baluster. She lightly knocked on the door of an 
apartment in the roof, entered and hastily seated herself on a 
chair offered her by an old man. 

“ Hide ! hide yourself!” she cried. “It is but seldom 
we go out, yet are our errands known, our steps watched ” 

“What has occurred?” asked another old woman, sitting 
near the small fire. 

“ The man who has been hanging about the house since 
yesterday followed me to-night.” 

The occupants of the place looked at each other in terror. 
The old man was the least concerned of the trio; he was 
in the greatest danger. When misfortune and the yoke of 
persecution oppress, a courageous man begins, as it were, to 
prepare for the sacrifice of himself ; he looks upon each day 
as a victory won from Fate. The anxiety which shone in the 
eyes of the two women, fixed as they were upon the old man, 
proved conclusively that he and he alone was the object of 
their fear. 

“ Shall, we distrust God, my sisters? ” he said in a hollow, 
impressive voice. “ Did we not chant praises to Him amidst 
the cries of assassins and victims in the convent ? Surely if 
it so pleased Him to save me from that slaughter, it must 
have been for some destiny which, without a murmur, I shall 
accept. The good God ever affords protection to His own, 
He disposes of them according to His ever-gracious will. It 
is of yourselves that we should think — not of me.” 

“ No,” said the first woman ; “what comparison can there 
be between our lives and that of a priest ? ” 


378 AN EPISODE OF THE REIGN OF TERROR. 


“I have considered myself as dead,” said the nun seated 
near the fire, “since the day that I found myself outside the 
Abbaye des Chelles.” 

“Here,” said the one who had lately entered, holding out 

the little blue box to the priest, “ here are the holy wafers 

Hark! ” she cried, interrupting herself. “I hear some one 
on the stairs.” 

All three listened intently. The noise ceased. 

“ Do not be alarmed,” said the abbe, “ even should any one 
request an entrance. A faithful and reliable person has ar 
ranged matters to cross the frontier ; he will shortly call here 
for letters I have already written to the Due de Langeais and 
the Marquis de Beausdant, telling them what measures they 
must adopt to get you out of this dreadful country, thus to 
save you from the death or misery that you must, otherwise, 
here undergo.” 

“Can you not follow us?” said the two nuns, in soft, 
despairing tones. 

“ My place is near the victims,” said the priest, simply. 

The nuns sat silent, gazing at him with rapt admiration. 

“Sister Martha,” he said, speaking to the nun who had 
fetched the wafers, “ the messenger must answer ‘ Fiat vol- 
untas ’ to the word ‘ Hosanna.’ ” 

“ There is some one on the stairway,” cried the other sister, 
at the same time quickly uncovering a hiding-place bored near 
the edge of the roof. 

This time the steps of a man, sounding in the deep silence 
of the rough stairs, were plainly to be heard as he encountered 
the gnarled boards and the cakes of hardened mud. The 
priest, with much difficulty, slid into the narrow niche- and 
the nuns hastily covered him with clothes. 

“You may shut me in, Sister Agatha,” he said, in a smoth- 
ered voice. 

Hardly was he in hiding when three knocks upon the door- 
jamb made the nuns tremble with apprehension. They con- 


AN EPISODE OF THE REIGN OF TERROR. 379 


suited each other with their eyes, for speak they dared not. 
They were like the plants of a conservatory, after their forty 
years of separation from the world, which wilt when exposed 
to the outer air. They knew none other than the life of the 
convent, that only were they accustomed to, no other could 
they conceive of, their ideas, as their life, were bounded by its 
walls ; and when, one morning, their bars and gratings were 
razed to the ground they shuddered to find themselves free. 
One may imagine the kind of imbecility which the events of 
the Revolution, enacted under their eyes, must have produced 
in these simple souls. They were quite incapable of harmoniz- 
ing the ideas of the convent with the exigencies of ordinary 
life ; they comprehended not their own situation ; like chil- 
dren who had ever had parental care, now severed from their 
maternal guardianship, they had ceased not to pray as other 
children cease not to cry. Thus in the presence of imminent 
danger they remained dumb, passive, and had no other defense 
than the resignation of the Christian. 

The intending intruder was left to interpret their silence as 
he might, but presently he opened the door and gave view of 
himself. The consternation of the two nuns was great, and 
they trembled as they recognized the person who had watched 
the house for some days past and had seemed to make inquiries 
about its inmates. They stood stockstill, looking him over 
with a disturbed curiosity, like as would the children of sav- 
ages examining a being from another clime. The stranger 
was very tall and stout, yet there was nothing indicating 
that he was a bad man. The immobility of the sisters was 
reproduced in himself, he remained without motion, his eyes 
roving slowly around the room. On planks were two bundles 
of straw which served as the nuns’ beds. In the centre of the 
room was a table, upon it a copper candlestick,, a few dishes, 
three knives, and a round loaf of bread. The fire in the 
grate was low, and the few sticks of wood piled in a corner of 
the room gave unmistakable evidence of the poverty of the 


380 AN EPISODE OF THE REIGN OF TERROR . 

occupants. The walls, once painted, now much defaced, 
showed the wretched state of the roof through which the rain 
had trickled, leaving a network of brown stains. A sacred 
relic, rescued, no doubt, from the looting of the Abbaye des 
Chelles, adorned the mantel. Three chairs, two chests, and 
a broken set of drawers comprised the whole of the furniture. 
A doorway near the fireplace showed the probability of an 
inner apartment. 

The man had soon mentally possessed himself of the inven- 
tory of this poor cell. Across his face came an expression of 
pity, he threw a glance beaming with kindliness upon the two 
startled women and appeared as much embarrassed as them- 
selves. The strange silence in which all three stood and faced 
each other, apparently long, really lasted but a moment, the 
stranger seeming to realize the weakness and inexperience of 
the poor helpless creatures. In a voice which he strove to 
render gentle, he said — 

“ I have not come as an enemy, citizenesses.” He paused, 
then resuming: “ My sisters, should harm happen to you, be 
sure that I shall not have been the cause. I have come to 
beg a favor of you.” 

Still they remained silent. 

“ If I ask too much — if I annoy you — I will at once de- 
part ; believe me, though, that I am heartily devoted to you ; 
should there be any service I can render you, command me 
without scruple. I, and I alone, perhaps, am above the law, 
since the King no longer exists.” 

These words given with the true ring of honesty induced 
Sister Agatha, a nun belonging to the ducal house of Langeais, 
whose manner showed that she had at one time lived amid 
the festivities of life and inhaled the breath of Court, to 
gravely point to a chair as who should say: “Be seated.” 
The unknown showed his pleasure by an exclamation, partly 
of melancholy, as he interpreted the gesture. He respectfully 
awaited the seating of the sisters and then obeyed it. 


AN EPISODE OE THE REIGN OF TERROR, 381 

You have given shelter,” he said, “to a venerable abbe 
who has not sworn allegiance to the Republic, who most mi- 
raculously escaped the massacre at the Carmelite convent.” 

“Hosanna," said Sister Agatha, suddenly interrupting the 
stranger, and looking at him anxiously and curiously. 

“That is not his name, I believe,” he made reply. 

“ But, monsieur, there is no priest here,” said Sister Martha, 
quickly, “and ■” 

“ Then you should be more careful,” said the visitor mildly, 
reaching to the table and taking up a breviary. “I can 
scarcely think you understand Latin and ” 

The extreme distress depicted on the features of the poor 
nuns warned him that he had gone too far , their agitation 
was excessive, their eyes filled with tears. 

“Be not afraid,” he said; “I know both the names of 
your guest and yourselves. During the past three days I have 
learned of your indigence and your brave devotion to the 
venerable Abb6 de ” 

“ Hush ! ” said Sister Agatha, ingenuously placing a finger 
on her lips. 

“ You see, my sisters, that had I had the horrible design of 
betraying you, that I might easily have done so time and 
again.” 

As he uttered these words the priest crawled from his 
prison and appeared in the centre of the room. 

“I cannot think, monsieur,” he said courteously, “that 
you can be one of my persecutors. I trust you. What do you 
desire of me ? ” 

The saint-like confidence of the aged man and the nobility 
of soul which showed on his countenance might well have dis- 
armed an assassin. The mysterious being who had agitated 
this penurious home, this place of divine resignation, stood in 
contemplation of the group before him ; then he addressed the 
abbe in a trusting voice, with these words : 

“ My father, I came to ask you to celebrate a mass for the 


382 AN EPISODE OF THE REIGN OF TERROR . 

repose of the soul — of — of a sacred being whose body can 
never be laid in holy ground.” 

The abb6 made an involuntary shudder. The nuns did not 
know of whom it was that the strange man had spoken ; they 
stood with their necks stretched, their faces turned toward the 
speakers, plainly showing eager curiosity. The ecclesiastic 
looked searchingly at the stranger; undoubted anxiety was 
discernible on every feature, and his eyes offered an earnest, 
ardent prayer. 

“Yes,” said the priest at length. “At midnight return 
here and I shall then be ready to celebrate the only requiem 
mass that we are able to offer as expiation of the crime of 
which you speak.” 

A shiver agitated the unknown ; then a sweet and solemn 
joy appeared to rise above some great and secret grief. He 
respectfully saluted the abbe and the two saintly women, and 
departed with a mute gratitude of which these charitable souls 
knew so well the interpretation. 

After two hours the stranger returned, knocked cautiously 
at the garret-door, and was admitted by Mile, de Langeais, 
who led him to the inner room of the lowly refuge, where all 
was in readiness for the ceremony. The old set of drawers 
had been placed by the nuns between the two chimney-flues, 
its scarred edges being hid beneath a magnificent altar-cloth 
of green moire. A large ebony and ivory crucifix hung on 
the discolored wall and stood out in bright relief from the ad- 
jacent bareness, and immediately caught the eye. Four small, 
slender tapers, which the sisters had managed to attach to the 
altar with sealing-wax, cast a dim glimmer hardly reflected by 
the dingy wall. These feeble rays barely lit up the rest of 
the chamber, but as their light illumined the sacred objects it 
looked like an aureola from heaven to enlighten the naked, 
undecorated altar. 

The floor was damp. The attic-roof sloped sharply on each 


AN EPISODE OF THE REIGN OF TERROR. 383 


side of the room and was filled with crevices admitting the 
boisterous wind. Far from stately, there was never aught more 
solemn than this dismal service. A long distant cry might 
easily have pierced the solemn silence — silence so profound 
that it gave majestic awe to this nocturnal scene. The pov- 
erty of the surroundings and the grandeur of the ceremony 
made a strong contrast, arousing the holy terrors of religion. 
The aged nuns knelt on either side of the altar on the earthen- 
tiled floor with ne’er a thought of its horrid dampness ; they, 
with the priest robed in his pontifical vestments, prayed aloud; 
the latter placed a golden chalice, incrusted with gems, upon 
the altar — no doubt a sacred vessel saved from the pillage of 
the Abbaye des Chelles. Near this cup, which had been a 
royal gift, was arranged the wafers and wine of the eucharist, 
contained in two drinking glasses hardly fit to grace the dingy 
tables of some mean tavern. The needed missal had been re- 
placed with the priest’s breviary, and lay on a corner of the 
impromptu altar. An earthen dish served as the ablution cup 
for the washing of those hands innocent and spotless of blood. 
It was at once majestic and paltry, poor yet noble, holy and 
profane in one. 

Between the sisters the unknown knelt with pious mien. 
Then his eyes caught sight of the crepe draping the chalice 
and crucifix — for bereft of other means of making known the 
object of this requiem mass the abb£ had put God Himself 
in mourning — the mysterious visitor was seized with an all- 
powerful recollection and great beads of perspiration gathered 
on his forehead. The four actors in this awful drama gazed 
upon each other in sympathy, their souls acted each upon the 
other and communicated the feelings of all in a mysterious 
blending of holy pity. Their one thought, it seemed, might 
have evoked from the dead that sacred martyr whose mortal 
remains had been devoured by quick-lime, but whose ghost 
rose before them in full majestic royalty. 

They were performing a requiem mass without the presence 


384 AN EPISODE OF THE REIGN OF TERROR. 


of the dead. Four pious souls knelt in intercession to God 
for a King of France, they were making his funeral ceremony 
minus a coffin, in a chamber showing disjointed laths and 
unplastered beams. No thought of self sullied this purest of 
all devotions, this act of marvelous loyalty. Maybe to God 
it was the cup of cold water that weighed in the balance as a 
myriad of virtues. Monarchy was present in the prayers of 
the priest and the two poor women ; it might be that Revolu- 
tion was also there in the person of the mysterious visitor 
whose countenance showed the remorse that caused him to 
offer this solemn repentance. 

In place of pronouncing the Latin words, “introibo ad altare 
Dei,” the abbe, with an intuition almost divine, looked down 
upon his congregation of three, who represented Christian 
France, and said, in words effectually effacing the meanness 
and squalor of the den : “We enter now into the sanctuary 
of God.” 

Solemn awe seized the hearers at these words, uttered with 
incisive unction. The great dome of St. Peter’s in Rome 
never canopied God in more awful majesty to humanity than 
He now was, beneath this trembling roof, in the eyes of these 
Christians; making patent the truth that no mediation is 
needed between God and man. His glory descends from 
Himself alone. The warm piety of the unknown was evi- 
dently sincere— the feeling that held the monarch and these 
four servants of God was one. The sacred words resounded 
as celestial music in the silence. At one moment the un- 
known one broke down and wept ; this was in the Pater 
noster , to which the abbe added a clause in Latin and which, 
it was apparent, the visitor understood and applied . Et re - 
mitte scelus regicidis sicut Ludovicus eis remisit semetipse , or, 
“And forgive the regicides as Louis XVI. himself forgave 
them.” The sisters saw the tears coursing down the virile 
cheeks of their visitor, and splashing fast on the tiled floor. 

The Office of the Dead was intoned. The Domine salvum 


AN EPISODE OF THE REIGN OF TERROR, 385 


fac regem ,* chanted in low tones, moved the hearts of these 
faithful monarchists as their thoughts turned to the infant 
King, for whom the prayer was offered, and who was now 
captive in the hands of his enemies. Perhaps fearing a further 
crime impending, in which he must needs perform an unwill- 
ing part, the unknown visitor shuddered. The service over, 
the cur6 motioned to the two nuns and they retired to the 
outer chamber. When he was alone with the unknown, the 
old man approached him with a gentle sadness and said, in 
the tone of a father : 

“ My son, if your hands have been steeped in the blood of 
that holy martyr, the King, confess now yourself to me. 
There is no crime in the eyes of God which may not be 
washed away by a repentance as deep and sincere as yours 
seems to be.” 

An involuntary movement of terror escaped the stranger at 
these words ; but he speedily resumed his stolid manner, and, 
looking on the priest with calm assurance, he said : 

“ My father,” in a voice that nevertheless trembled, “no 
one can be more innocent than myself of the blood shed ” 

“ I verily believe it,” said the priest. 

He paused and further examined the penitent; then, his 
belief becoming certainty that he was one of those timorous 
members of the Assembly who sacrificed the sacred and in- 
violate head to save their own, he proceeded in a grave voice: 

“ Remember, my son, that much more than not having 
taken part in that great sin is necessary to absolve from guilt. 
Those who retained their sabres in their sheaths, when they 
should have drawn to defend their King, must render a heavy 
account to the King of kings. Yes,” said the venerable abb£, 
moving his head expressively, “ yes, heavy indeed ! by idly 
standing by they became the accomplices in a terrible trans- 
gression.” 

“ Is it your belief,” said the stranger in a tone of amaze- 
* Lord save the King. 


25 


886 AN EPISODE OF THE REIGN OF TERROR. 


ment, “that an indirect participation will be punished? The 
soldier under orders to form the line — was he guilty? ” 

The abb6 hesitated. 

He, the stranger, was glad of the dilemma that placed this 
royalist between the two canons of passive obedience and the 
consecrated person of the King — the former in the minds of 
monarchists should dominate the military system — and he 
readily accepted the hesitancy on the part of the priest as 
solving the doubts that troubled him. Then, so as to allow 
no time for the old Jansenist to further reflect, he said quickly : 

“ It would cause me to blush were I to offer you any fee 
whatever for the requiem mass you have just celebrated for 
the rest of the soul of the King and for the ease of my con- 
science. Inestimable things can only be purchased by offer- 
ings without price. Be pleased to accept, monsieur, the gift 
of a holy relic, it is yours ; the time may be when you will 
realize its value.” 

Speaking these words he gave the ecclesiastic a small box 
of light weight. The priest involuntarily held out his hand 
and took it, for the solemn tone of the words and the mani- 
fest awe depicted on the stranger’s face as he held the box 
filled him with fresh amazement. The two nuns were await- 
ing them as they entered the outer room together. 

“ You are residing,” said the stranger, “ in a house owned 
by Mucius Scsevola, a plasterer living on the first floor, who is 
noted in this arrondissement for his patriotism. All the same, 
he is secretly devoted to the Bourbons. Formerly he was Mon- 
seigneur le Prince de Conti’s huntsman, he owes everything 
to him. In this dwelling, so long as you may stay, you are 
in greater safety than you could be in any other part of 
France. Pray remain. Pious souls will supply your needs 
and will watch over and protect you ; remain here awaiting 
without fear the coming of brighter days. A year hence, on 
that same twenty-first of January ”* (he shuddered as he uttered 
* Louis XVI. was guillotined on this date. 


AN EPISODE OF THE REIGN OF TERROR. S87 


these words), “ I shall come again to once more celebrate the 
mass of expiation ” 

He could not end the sentence. He bowed to his silent 
auditors and, casting a last, lingering look upon the tokens 
of their poverty, he disappeared. 

This event, to the two simple-minded women, had all the 
interest of romance. When the venerable abbe spoke to them 
of his mysterious gift, and in what a solemn manner it had 
been tendered by the stranger, it was placed upon the table 
and three anxious faces, dimly illumined by a tallow-candle, 
betrayed uncontrollable curiosity. Mademoiselle de Langeais 
opened the little box, she took from it an exquisite handker- 
chief of marvelous fineness, stained with perspiration. When 
she unfolded it they saw dark stains. 

“ That is blood ! ” said the abbe. 

“It is marked with the royal crown!” cried the other 
nun. 

The sisters let it fall, this precious relic, with gestures of 
horror. The mystery that enfolded their unknown visitant 
was inexplicable to these ingenuous minds, and the abbe, 
from that day on, forbade himself to attempt the solving of 
the enigma. 

The three recluses soon noticed that, in despite of the Ter- 
ror, a powerful arm was outstretched above them. They first 
received firewood and victuals ; then the sisters readily sur- 
mised that some woman must be associated with their pro- 
tector, for linen and clothes came mysteriously to them ; this 
gave them opportunity of going out without danger of observa- 
tion from the aristocratic style of the only apparel they had 
been able to obtain ; lastly, Mucius Scsevola carried to them 
certificates of citizenship. 

The necessary means to be taken to secure the safety of the 
abbe would often come from the most unexpected places, and 
it always proved so singularly opportune that it was evident 


388 AN EPISODE OF THE REIGN OF TERROR. 


that it could only have been given by some personage know- 
ing the secrets of the State. Famine was rampant in Paris, 
yet they daily found at the door of their hovel rations of 
white bread, always laid there by invisible hands. They 
recognized, or thought they did, the agent of their benefac- 
tions in Mucius Scsevola, as they were ever timely and just as 
needed, but the noble tenants of the dilapidated garret never 
doubted that the unknown being who, with them, had cele- 
brated mass on January 22, 1793, was their secret protector. 
A special prayer for him was added to their daily supplica- 
tions ; each night, each day these pious hearts prayed fervently 
for his happiness, prosperity, and redemption. God was im- 
plored to keep his feet from snares and to save him from his 
enemies, and to grant him a happy, long, and peaceful life. 

Their gratitude, renewed daily, as it were, was impregnated 
with curiosity that grew more intense with each day. All the 
circumstances attending the advent of the stranger formed a 
ceaseless subject of conversation, conjectures were endless; 
this ultimately became a benefit of a special kind from their 
minds being thus occupied and distracted. They had quite 
resolved that, when he should attend on the next sad com- 
memoration of the anniversary of the death of Louis XVI., 
the unknown should not be allowed to escape the due expres- 
sion of their gratitude. 

At length that night, so impatiently awaited, arrived. At 
midnight the heavy footfalls resounded on the wooden stairs. 
The chamber was already arranged for the sacrament, the altar 
dressed. This time the sisters opened the door and hurried 
to show a light at the entrance. Mademoiselle de Langeais 
even descended a few stairs that she might get a first glimpse 
of their benefactor. 

“Come!” said she, in an entreating, trembling voice. 
“ Come, thou art expected.’* 

The man raised his head, looked gloomily at the nun, and 
made no answer. She felt as if an ice-cold blanket had fallen 


AN EPISODE OF THE REIGN OF TERROR. 389 

upon her, and she kept silence. His aspect dried up the 
gratitude and curiosity of their hearts. It was probable he 
was less cold, less taciturn, less terrible than he seemed to 
these simple creatures to be, whose own emotions led them to 
expect a responsive echo of their flow of friendship. It was 
easy for them to decry that this mysterious one intended re- 
maining a stranger, so they acquiesced with resignation. The 
abb£, though, fancied he detected a quickly repressed smile 
upon the visitor's lips, as he noted the preparations made for 
his reception. He listened to the mass, prayed, and disap- 
peared immediately, refusing in courteous tones the invitation 
extended by Mademoiselle de Langeais to remain and partake 
of the humble fare they had prepared for him. 

After Thermidor the 9th the sisters and the Abb6 de Ma- 
rolles could traverse Paris without fear. The aged abbe paid 
his first visit to the Queen of Roses, a perfumery store kept by 
Citizen and Citizeness Ragon, formerly the Court perfumers, 
and esteemed for thei>r faithfulness to the Bourbons, and whom 
the Vendeens utilized as a means of communication with the 
princes and the committees of Royalists in Paris. Abbe de 
Marolles wore the clothing prescribed by the Code ; as he was 
leaving the portal of the store, situated between the church of 
Saint-Roch and the Rue des Fondeurs, a mob of people 
crowding down the Rue Saint-Honor^ prevented his de- 
parture. 

“What is it?” he said to Madame Ragon. 

“ Nothing ! ” she replied, “but the tumbril and the execu- 
tioner going to the Place Louis XV. Oh, we saw more than 
enough of that last year ! But see now, only four days after 
the anniversary of the 21st of January, we can gaze upon it, 
that most horrid procession, with equanimity.” 

“ How so? ” inquired the abb6. “ What you are saying is 
unchristian.” 

“But, Monsieur l’Abb6, this is the execution of Robes- 


390 AN EPISODE OF THE REIGN OF TERROR. 

pierre’s accomplices. They could not prevail to longer evade 
it, and, now, they in their turn are going the way they sent so 
many innocent ones.” 

The Rue Saint-Honore was choked with the crowd which 
surged on like a wave. Above the ocean of heads the Abbe 
de Marolles, yielding to an irresistible impulse, saw, standing 
upright in the cart, the unknown visitor who but three days 
agone had joined in the second celebration of the mass of 
commemoration. 

“ Who is that ? ” he said, “ that one standing ” 

“The executioner,” answered Monsieur Ragon, giving him 
the name he had under the monarchy. 

“ Help! help ! ” cried Madame Ragon. “ Monsieur l’Abbe 
has fainted.” 

She quickly caught up a flask of toilet-vinegar and he was 
soon restored to consciousness. 

“ He must have given me,” said the venerable abbe, “the 
handkerchief that the King used to wipe his brow as he was led 
to his martyrdom. Poor man ! a heart had that steel-blade 
when all France was without one.” 

The perfumers thought the words of the abbe were those of 
delirium. 



LB Je 12 





. 
















* 
















